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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 

MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


^i# 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/beliefsaboutmanOOsavarich 


BELIEFS  ABOUT  MAN 


M.   J.    SAVAGE 


"  From  God,  down  out  of  heaven, 

John  saw  "  the  city  "  fair 
Descend  in  gorgeous  vision, — 

A  city  of  the  air. 
By  human  labor  founded 

On  rock-hewn  truths  below. 
To  God,  up  toward  the  heavens, 

I  see  "  the  city  "  grow. 


BOSTON: 

George  H.  Ellis,  141  Franklin  Street. 

1884. 


Copyright, 

1882, 

By  GEORGE  H.  ELLIS 


©etiication 

Believing  that  the  best  hope  of  any  future  salvation  lies  along  the  line 

of  taking  this  world  at  its  best,  and  doing  what  one  can  to 

make  it  better,  the  author  dedicates  this  book 


THOSE  WHO  STAHD  READY  TO  "LEHD  A  HAHD" 


ivi3632^9 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.    Preface,         ...                       vii 

II.    Sonnets  : 

The  Old  "Gospel," viii 

The  New  Gospel, ix 

III.  What  is  Man? i 

IV.  The  Origin  of  Man, 17 

V.    The  Problem  of  Sin  and  Salvation,     ....  34 

VI.    Is  Man  Free? 49 

VII.    The  Motive  Forces  of  Human  Life 63 

VIII.    The  Law  of  Progress 80 

IX.    The  Earthly  Outlook,  • 98 

X.    Is  Death  the  End? 114 

XI.    Note  to  Chap.  VI., 129 


PREFACE 


I  HAD  in  mind  last  year  one  book,  to  be  called  God  and  Man. 
But  the  one  book  has  become  two.  Belief  in  God  was  published 
in  book  form  last  spring.  Now  comes  its  companion,  Beliefs  about 
il/ia«,  asking  that  "the  twain"  —  always  one  in  intention  —  may 
be  "  joined  together "  in  the  hand  and  thought  of  the  reader. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  these  discourses  claim  only  to  be  essays 
—  attempts  —  at  treating  themes,  each  one  of  which  is  worthy  of 
a  volume  by  itself.  Believing  that  the  humble  path  of  "  the  scien- 
tific method  "  is  the  only  one  that  promises  to  lead  any\vhere,  I  have 
tried  to  avoid  the  highway  of  assumption,  and  to  keep  my  feet 
upon  the  solid  ground  of  verifiable  knowledge. 

It  is  perhaps  proper  for  me  to  say  that  these  sermons  were  all 
spoken  in  the  ordinary  course  of  my  Sunday  morning  work,  and 
are  now  published  from  stenographic  reports. 


Boston,  Dec.  ig, 


M.  J.  S. 


THE  OLD  "GOSPEL' 


A  MOVELESS  silence  through  the  deeps  of  space. 
As  yet  time  is  not ;  for  nor  earth  nor  star 
Swings  its  fixed  changes,  or  marks  off  afar 

Or  light  or  shadow  to  a  watching  race. 

Filling  the  void,  and  "  moving  on  the  face 
Of  the  great  deep,"  three  gods  forever  are, — 
Three  gods  in  one, —  and  to  their  will  no  bar 

In  all  the  universe  finds  any  place. 

They  in  "  eternal  council "  what  shall  be 
For  God's  sole  glory  fix ;  so  to  display 

His  goodness  and  his  justice.     Thus,  the  stage 

Of  earth  and  time  is  built,  that  worlds  may  see 
Man's  tragic  comedy,  as  runs  away 
The  tide  of  smiles  and  tears  age  after  age. 

II. 

Opens  the  scene  in  Eden.     Man  appears ; 
And  then  " the  serpent "  coiling  round  "the  tree 
Of  good  and  evil," — both  "ordained"  to  be, 

Thus  to  unroll  the  drama  of  the  years. 

Cast  out,  the  slave  of  lying  hopes  and  fears, 
Man  wanders  in  the  dark,  and  seeks  to  see 
"  The  way  of  life."     But  no  one  "  finds  "  save  "  he 

To  whom  'tis  given,"  though  sought  "  with  care  and  tears." 

A  "  blood-bought "  "  few  are  chosen."     All  the  rest 
Down  dark  ways  stumble  to  the  lost  abyss, 
Where  unavailing  woe  is  all  their  doom. 

But  there  aloft  the  "  little  flock  "  is  blest. 

God's  "glorious  grace"  assures  their  narrow  bliss; 
And  "glorious  justice  "  lowers  in  nether  gloom. 

Dbcbmbbr,  i88i. 


WHAT  IS  MAN? 


I  BEGIN  this  morning  a  series  of  discourses  concerning 
Man.  I  shall  have  to  make  this  first  one  more  or  less 
abstract  and  theoretical,  dealing  with  first  principles,  with 
what  on  the  one  hand  may  strike  you  as  commonplace 
and  unimportant ;  on  the  other  hand,  with  those  things  that 
may  seem  to  you  so  theoretical  and  far  away  as  to  be,  if  not 
difficult  of  comprehension,  still  hardly  able  to  thrill  you  with 
any  feeling  of  interest.  And  yet  work  like  this  always  has 
to  be  done.  Before  a  train  of  cars,  lighted,  decorated,  fra- 
grant with  flowers,  full  of  a  happy  company,  with  laughter 
and  song,  can  rush  in  its  speed  across  the  country,  there 
must  first  be  the  dull,  drudging  work  of  laying  out  the  way, 
building  the  road-bed,  laying  down  the  ties  and  rails,  and 
driving  spike  after  spike  to  hold  things  in  their  places.  So 
in  the  treatment  of  any  great  subject  like  this  there  must 
first  be  well-prepared  work,  the  laying  down  of  first  princi- 
ples, taking  our  starting-point,  making  our  definitions,  set- 
tling where  we  are  and  how  we  are  to  begin. 

I  wish,  however,  to  say  this  one  thing  in  recognition  of 
your  generous  response  to  me  in  the  years  that  are  past :  I 
feel  glad  and  proud  to  know  that  I  have  always  had  the  most 
generous  response  from  this  congregation  when  I  have  asked 
of  them  the  hardest  things.     This  by  way  of  introduction. 


The  story  is  related  of  the  German  philosopher,  Schopen- 
hauer, that,  as  he  was  walking  the   street  one  day  with  his 


2  Beliefs  about  Man. 

head  down,  profoundly  meditating  on  some  deep  theme  of 
man  or  the  universe,  some  one,  engaged  in  the  practical  busi- 
ness of  life,  having  no  time  to  spare  for  philosophy,  came 
into  violent  collision  with  him  on  the  sidewalk.  Angry,  as 
such  a  man  would  be,  thus  stopped  by  one  whom  he  sup- 
IDOsed  to  be  some  old,  self-absorbed  man  carelessly  crossing 
his  way,  he  broke  out  with  the  words,  "Who  are  you?" 
The  old  philosopher,  looking  up  kindly  in  his  face,  said, 
*'Ah,  friend,  I  would  give  the  world  to  the  man  who  would 
answer  me  that  question." 

This,  then,  is  the  great  question  of  the  world, —  Who  are 
you  ?  Who  am  I  ?  If  I  could  answer  this  there  would  be 
no  mystery  left  for  me  in  the  universe.  You  remember 
how  beautifully  the  poet  Tennyson,  in  words  that  I  have 
quoted  to  you  more  than  once,  addresses  the  "  flower  in  the 
crannied  wall,"  and  declares  that  if  he  could  understand 
this  flower,  root  in  all,  and  all  in  all,  he  would  know  what 
God  is  and  what  man  is.  Much  more,  then,  may  we  say  :  If 
I  could  answer  the  question.  Who  are  you,  who  am  I  ?  I 
should  be  able  to  understand  the  flower  in  the  crannied  wall; 
I  should  be  able  to  understand  the  infinite  mystery  of  the 
universe.  You  will  readily  understand,  then,  that  I  do  not 
expect  this  morning  to  be  able  satisfactorily  and  completely 
to  answer  this  question,  What  is  man?  All  I  can  attempt, 
or  all  any  man  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge  can  attempt, 
is  simply  to  indicate  the  limits  of  knowledge  and  of  igno- 
rance, to  say  what  we  know,  what  we  do  not  know ;  to  say,  in 
this  direction  there  is  no  use  for  farther  search,  it  is  decided 
that  nothing  more  there  can  be  known  ;  this  way  is  the  line 
of  inquiry  that  promises  future  developments,  the  path  toward 
which,  then,  we  should  set  our  investigating  feet.  This  is  all 
that  we  can  undertake. 

Man, —  who  is  he  ?     If  we  are  to  have  a  comprehensive 


What  is  He?  3 

grasp  of  our  subject,  we  must  look  at  man  not  as  he  is  here 
in  Boston,  not  merely  at  the  Newtons,  the  Miltons,  or  the 
great  religious  geniuses :  we  must  look  back  and  down.  We 
must  see  man  in  his  lowest  as  well  as  in  his  highest  develop- 
ment; bearing  in  mind,  however,  that  our  last  and  highest 
definition  of  him  must  be  formed  not  from  man  at  his  worst 
or  in  his  rudiments,  but  man  at  his  highest  and  best.  If  I 
wish  to  give  a  definition  of  an  oak,  or  a  picture  .of  it,  that 
shall  be  comprehensible,  that  shall  make  one  understand 
what  I  mean  when  I  use  that  word,  I  do  not  simply  confine 
myself  to  the  definition  of  an  acorn,  or  the  first  shoot  spring- 
ing above  the  sod,  or  even  to  the  growing  shrub  and  young 
tree.  I  will  see  if  I  can  find  an  oak  a  century  old,  with  its 
branches  spreading  wide ;  one  that  has  wrestled  with  the 
storms  of  a  hundred  years;  one  that  has  drunk  in  the  sun- 
light of  a  hundred  blue-skyed  summers.  I  will  find  an  oak 
that  has  become  a  mighty  tree,  and  will  say, —  whatever  may 
be  the  abortions,  whatever  may  be  the  failures  along  the 
path, —  That  is  an  oak.  And  so  we  have  a  right  to  say  of  a 
man.  Study  the  Bushman  of  Africa,  if  you  please,  or  the 
Digger  Indian  of  California,  or  the  lowest,  poorest  elements 
of  the  race ;  study  him  as  a  criminal ;  study  him  as  con- 
tented in  luxury ;  study  him  in  whatever  state  of  civilization 
you  please  ;  but  at  the  last  it  is  this  highest  type  that  consti- 
tutes the  man.  We  look  to  Socrates,  we  look  to  Buddha,  to 
Newton,  to  Jesus, — the  highest  spirit  of  them  all, —  and  say, 
That  is  a  man. 

But  we  must  bear  well  in  mind  that  there  are  these  ex- 
tremes. Man  includes  those  away  down  there,  the  naked 
savage  living  in  the  woods  or  hiding  in  caves,  and  the  man 
up  here  who  has  constructed  the  grandest  architecture,  built 
the  finest  palaces  of  the  world.  It  is  man,  scratching  some 
rude  image  on  the  surface  of  a  smooth  bone,  the  first  begin- 


4  Beliefs  about  Man. 

ning  of  that  creative  faculty  which  at  last  culminates  in  a 
Raphael,  in  a  Michel  Angelo,  in  the  highest  development 
of  pictorial  art.  It  is  man  down  there,  shaping  with  infinite 
toil  some  crude,  repulsive  image  that  hardly  looks  human; 
it  is  man  up  here,  carving  the  Venus  of  Milo  and  the  Apollo 
Belvedere.  Man  down  there,  worshipping  a  stick  or  a  stone 
or  a  lizard ;  or  here,  worshipping  in  the  cathedral  of  Cologne 
or  Saint  Peter's ;  or,  higher  yet  than  any  human  art  can  go, 
giving  utterance  to  those  sublime  spiritual  truths  of  Jesus 
that  picture  man  as  capable  of  thinking  of  God  as  the  infi- 
nite and  eternal  spirit.  Man  down  there,  cruel,  more  cruel, 
more  pitiless  than  any  wild  beast  of  the  earth ;  man  up  here, 
suffering,  dying  through  hours  of  lingering  torture,  submit- 
ting to  this  for  the  sake  of  the  cruel  and  barbaric  element  in 
humanity  that  puts  him  to  death, —  dying  for  love  of  him 
who  kills  for  hate ;  dying  with  words  of  compassion  and  pity 
on  his  lips  for  this  other  side  of  his  same  nature  that  shows 
itself  so  fiendish  and  cruel.  Man  down  there,  not  able  per- 
haps to  count  the  fingers  on  his  two  hands;  man  up  here, 
with  the  keennest  and  most  far-reaching  instruments  of  the 
mathematics  of  the  civilized  world,  measuring  the  stars, 
working  out  complicated  problems  of  astronomy,  the  very 
mechanical  performance  of  which  shall  keep  him  through  the 
tireless  labor  of  years.  These  extremes  in  all  departments 
of  life  you  must  keep  in  mind.  You  must  learn  the  possi- 
bility of  all  these  contrasts. 

All  this,  do  I  say?  Unspeakably  more ;  for  man  is  not 
yet  complete,  not  yet  has  he  attained  his  growth.  There 
is  in  him  this  aspiring,  onward-looking  ideal  that  demands  an 
eternity  for  its  results.  Down  here,  a  worm  of  the  dust ;  up 
there,  a  spirit,  who  dares  to  think  he  is  a  child  of  the  Infinite 
Spirit,  who  dares  to  hope  that  his  future  career  shall  run  par- 
allel with  his  who  is  himself  the  Ancient  of  Days. 


What  is  He?  5 

Now,  what  is  this  creature,  man  ?  If  we  could  accept  the 
old,  traditional  explanation  of  him,  it  would  all  be  very  sim- 
ple. We  should  know  that  certain  problems  were  closed  and 
could  not  be  opened ;  and  we  should  no  longer  attempt  to 
thrust  our  keys  of  investigation  into  the  wards  of  those  locks 
that  an  infinite  power  had  made  inaccessible.  The  tradi- 
tional story  is  given  you  in  Genesis :  that  God,  six  thousand 
years  ago,  created  man  out  of  the  dust,  and  breathed  into 
him  a  soul.  Although  it  does  not  appear  in  the  transla- 
tion, and  I  suppose  the  majority  of  readers  are  unacquainted 
with  the  fact,  yet  it  is  a  fact  that  this  word  soul  means  no 
more  as  applied  to  Adam  than  it  does  to  any  of  the  lower 
animals.  It  is  precisely  the  same  word  in  the  original  He- 
brew.    So  this  does  not  seem  to  settle  much  for  us  after  all. 

The  story,  then,  is  that  man  was  created  six  thousand 
years  ago  out  of  the  dust,  and  a  soul  put  inside  of  him  ;  and 
that  he  was  created  for  the  express  purpose,  after  a  period  of 
probation,  of  being  translated  to  heaven,  to  fill  up  the  ranks 
that  were  broken  by  the  rebellion  and  fall  of  those  that  were 
cast  out  when  Satan  lifted  his  impious  arm  against  omnipo- 
tence. But  we  cannot  accept  this  story  as  anything  more 
than  a  myth  or  legend.  We  have  no  accredited  word  of 
explanation  that  answers  for  us  our  question.  We  must  then 
follow  the  humbler  course  of  modern  science.  We  must 
look  at  man,  ask  our  questions,  and  see  if  we  can  get  answers 
that  we  can  verify  as  true. 

If  a  being  should  come  to  this  planet  from  some  other 
world,  and  should  look  over  the  inhabitants,  from  the  lowest 
forms  of  life  up  to  man,  he  would  at  the  first  glance,  most 
certainly  and  most  unhesitatingly,  say  that,  whatever  else 
man  might  be,  he  was  an  animal ;  and  here  must  be  our 
starting  point. 

Whatever  else  man  is,  he  is  an  animal ;  an  animal  in  every 


6  Beliefs  about  Man. 

passion,  instinct,  faculty,  and  quality  of  being.  He  is  one 
with  the  poor  relations  that  are  about  and  beneath  him.  He 
shares  with  the  animal  world  a  much  larger  part  of  his  nat- 
ure than  the  most  of  us  are  accustomed  to  think. 

Let  me,  for  example,  glance  over  a  few  points,  that  we  may 
see  wherein  man  differs  from  the  animals  of  the  earth.  Ani- 
mals beneath  man  think  ;  they  reason ;  they  suffer ;  they  en- 
joy ;  they  hope  ;  they  fear  ;  they  dream  ;  they  imagine  ;  they 
love ;  they  hate ;  they  are  capable  of  self-sacrifice  ;  they  are 
capable  of  a  devotion  that  leads  even  to  death  itself  for 
the  objects  of  their  love.  They  share  with  man  almost  all 
those  faculties  that  we  think  of  as  highest  and  most  human. 

Where,  then,  is  the  distinction  ?  We  shall  find  a  distinc- 
tion that  is  intellectual,  that  is  moral.  But,  as  to  whether 
this  distinction  is  one  of  degree  or  of  kind,  I  for  one  shall 
not  attempt  to  settle.  I  do  not  know,  and  I  do  not  know 
of  any  one  who  does  know,  whether  this  difference  between 
the  animal  and  man  is  absolutely  a  difference  of  kind  or 
whether  it  is  simply  of  degree.  At  any  rate,  this  much  is 
true :  that  there  is  a  wider  gulf  to-day  between  the  highest 
man  on  earth  and  the  lowest  than  there  is  between  this 
lowest  man  and  the  highest  animal.  Precisely  what  the 
nature  of  this  gulf  is  I  do  not  feel  competent  to  decide ;  and 
certainly  I  shall  not  dogmatize  concerning  what  I  do  not 
know.  It  is  quite  possible,  however,  that  a  difference  of 
degree  may  be  so  great  as  to  amount  to  what  we  call  a  dif- 
ference in  kind. 

But  there  are  these  marked  distinctions.  Animals,  so  far 
as  we  know,  are  incapable  of  abstract  thought.  A  dog  is 
able  to  tell  a  red  object  from  a  black  one  ;  but  we  have  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  he  thinks  redness  or  blackness,  as 
qualities  abstracted  from  the  things  that  are  black  or  red. 

Here,  then,  is  one  marked  distinction,  and,  if  you  appreciate 


What  is  He?  7 

intellectual  differences,  one  that  is  nothing  else  than  an  im- 
mense gulf  of  separation. 

Then,  so  far  as  we  know,  no  member  of  the  animal  world 
is  self-conscious  as  a  man  is,,  saying,  "  I  am  I."  He  does 
not  look  out  over  the  rest  of  the  world,  intellectually  dis- 
tinguishing it  from  himself,  and  laying  out  lines  of  thought 
and  the  directions  in  which  it  is  possible  for  him  to  study 
and  know. 

Another  grand  distinction,  another  immense  gulf  of  sep- 
aration, consists  in  this ;  that  there  is  no  member  of  the 
animal  world,  so  far  as  we  are  aware,  that  is  capable  of 
voluntary  self-improvement.  A  bird  will  build  a  nest  after 
a  certain  pattern,  according  to  the  place  where  it  is  located. 
Give  him  a  better  place  to  build  it,  and  he  will  build  a  better 
nest.  Give  him  better  materials,  and  he  will  produce  a 
better  result.  But  a  bird  never  yet  started  out  on  a  mission 
of  creating  a  new  set  of  surroundings,  of  improving  the  world 
he  lived  iw,  or  voluntarily  changed  this  or  that,  so  that  his 
whole  environment  might  be  improved. 

No  animal  yet,  so  far  as  we  know,  is  capable  of  looking 
back  and  saying,  "  We  originated  away  down  there,  and  we 
have  arrived  at  this  point  of  progress,  and  are  still  capable 
of  going  on  and  on."  Here,  then,  are  these  intellectual 
distinctions. 

What  is  there  in  the  moral  region  ?  I  believe  that  ani- 
mals have  at  least  the  rudiments  of  that  which  we  call 
morality  among  men.  But  they  are  not  capable,  so  far  as 
we  know,  of  distinguishing  the  abstract  right  and  the  wrong; 
of  thinking  that  this  is  right  and  that  this  wrong,  and  that 
this  is  so  because  of  certain  results  that  flow  from  them. 
This  abstract  conception  of  right  and  wrong  lifts  man  in- 
finitely above  any  other  animal  of  the  world. 

In  the   religious  sphere  there  is  another  distinction.     I  be- 


8  Beliefs  about  Man. 

lieve  that  the  animal  world  sliows  some  of  the  lowest  traces 
of  that  which  we  call  religious  in  faculty  and  feeling.  The 
animal  looks  up  to  its  master  with  a  sense  of  dependence, 
with  a  feeling  of  admiration,  with  a  readiness  to  obey  his 
higher  will  and  law  ;  but  man  is  infinitely  beyond  that.  He 
recognizes  not  simply  something  admirable  above  him,  not 
a  power  and  law  only,  but  a  reasonableness  and  goodness  in 
this  power  and  law,  and  he  idealizes  and  personifies  it.  He 
recognizes  it  as  a  power  living  in  the  universe,  manifesting 
itself  in  all  its  forces  and  forms.  He  is  able  to  give  it  a 
name  ;  and  to  say  of  this  ideal  power  and  law,  "  It  is  God  "; 
to  feel  a  consciousness  of  the  mysterious  connection  and 
sympathy  between  that  and  himself,  and  to  say  :  *'  I  am  a 
part  of  this  power  and  law.  He  is  God ;  and  I  am  son  of 
God.  I  partake  of  his  nature,  worshipping  not  through  fear 
any  longer,  but  because  he  is  worshipful,  good,  loving,  and 
true." 

No  matter  whether  these  points  can  be  scientifically  de- 
monstrated or  not :  I  am  only  outlining  facts  of  thought  and 
feeling. 

Man  is  a  being,  then,  whom  these  things  lift  unspeakably 
above  any  other  creature  with  which  we  are  acquainted  in  the 
miiverse.  Now  then,  leaving  this  point,  wherein  we  have  at- 
tempted to  distinguish  between  man  and  the  lower  forms  of 
the  animal  world,  let  us  raise  another  question  which  is  cen- 
tral and  important. 

Perhaps  you  may  be  surprised  that  I  raise  it  at  all.  You 
have  been  accustomed  very  likely  to  accept  the  traditional 
explanations,  without  caring  much  as  to  what  they  meant 
and  where  they  would  lead  you.  Has  man  a  soul  }  Or,  to 
put  it  more  philosophically,  is  man  a  unity  or  a  duality  or  a 
trinity  ?  Am  I  one,  or  am  I  two,  or  am  I  three  ?  Have  I 
a  body  and  a  soul  ?     Or  have  I  a  body,  a  soul,  and  a  spirit, 


What  is  He?  9 

as  some  philosophers  say  ?  Let  us  look  at  this  whole  ques- 
tion for  a  moment. 

Here,  again,  if  we  accept  the  traditional  explanations,  we 
need  not  trouble  ourselves.  But,  as  I  have  told  you,  the 
account  of  the  creation  of  man  in  Genesis  does  not  answer 
any  question  for  us,  for  the  very  word  which  means  soul  as 
applied  to  Adam  is  the  same  word  which  is  used  of  the 
lion  and  the  jdog.  It  means  simply  the  principle  of  life. 
St.  Paul  has  a  theory,  which  he  carries  out  in  his  letters, 
that  man  is  threefold  in  his  nature, —  body,  soul,  and  spirit. 
He  shares  with  the  animal  the  body  and  soul,  and  has  for 
his  own  peculiar  possession  the  spirit,  the  divine  and  immor- 
tal part.  Church  philosophy,  in  its  attempts  to  deal  with 
this  matter,  has  never,  so  far  as  I  know,  applied  the  scientific 
method  of  looking  for  facts.  But  how  natural  these  ques- 
tions are,  how  easily  they  spring  up  in  everybody's  mind, 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  I  have  been  asked  oftener 
than  almost  anything  else  concerning  evolution.  How,  if 
man  has  been  developed  from  the  animals,  did  he  get  his 
soul,  and  at  what  time  did  he  get  it  .<*  I  shall  not  enter  upon 
this  discussion  to-day,  but  speak  of  it  as  showing  how  vital 
it  is  in  popular  thought. 

Ecclesiastical  philosophy  has  had  three  great  theories  as  to 
the  origin  of  the  human  soul ;  and  these  theories  have  been 
held  one  after  another,  by  this  school  of  thinkers  or  tliat, 
almost  solely  with  reference  to  its  agreement  with  this  or 
that  doctrine  of  sin.  For  example,  it  has  been  one  of  the 
most  prevalent  beliefs  of  the  world  that  the  soul  of  man  is 
pre-existent  and  eternal,  and  that  this  soul  takes  possession 
of  the  body,  or  is  incarnated,  at  the  time  of  birth.  Most 
Christian  philosophers  have  surrendered  this  belief,  because 
it  does  not  accord  with  the  doctrine  of  the  inheritance  of 
sin  from  Adam,  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity. 


lO  Beliefs  about  Man. 

This  idea  was  prevalent,  in  the  ancient  world.  It  was 
held  by  Plato  that  the  soul  of  man  is  eternal ;  that  it  lived 
in  other  spheres,  in  other  worlds,  before  it  was  bom  into 
these  humble  scenes.  Many  held  that  this  coming  into  the 
body  was  a  degradation.  This,  too,  was  the  Platonic  idea, — 
that,  because  of  some  sin  in  the  previous  life,  the  soul  was 
imprisoned  in  this  body,  and  by  and  by  it  will  escape  from 
it,  and  go  back  to  its  native  home. 

Another  theory  is  that  of  Creationism,  or  the  belief  that, 
at  the  time  of  birth,  or  some  time  previous  to  that,  God 
creates  a  soul  for  each  individual,  and  incarnates  it  in  the 
body  at  the  time  of  birth. 

A  third  theory  is  that  known  as  Traducianbm, —  that  is, 
that  the  soul  is  inherited  from  the  father.  This  has  been  the 
common  belief  of  the  Church,  because  it  falls  in  easily  with 
the  doctrine  of  inherited  sin  and  evil,  and  accords  well  with 
the  headship  of  Adam,  and  the  fall  of  man  in  him. 

This  is  a  brief  outline  of  the  views  that  have  been  held. 
The  point  of  importance  to  us,  and  the  only  one  we  care  to 
follow,  is  whether  we  are  to  think  of  ourselves  as  double  in 
our  nature,  or  whether  we  are  one.  I,  for  one,  do  not  believe 
that  I  have  a  soul.  If  there  is  any  truth  in  this  doctrine,  the 
soul  is  not  something  I  have,  it  is  something  I  am. 

People  go  around  the  country  asking  if  you  have  looked 
after  the  sa\dng  of  your  soul,  as  if  it  were  a  piece  of  prop- 
erty that  you  could  get  out  a  policy  of  insurance  on  and  be 
at  rest  about;  as  if  it  were  something  you  carried  w4th  or 
had  about  you.     If  it  is  anv-thing,  the  soul  is  the  self. 

Is  there  any  proof  that  there  are  tvvo  of  us,  or  three  of  us, 
or  is  there  only  one  ?  It  is  very  convenient  for  the  purposes 
of  study  to  group  human  nature  according  to  the  faculties. 
Mental  philosophers  di\dde  man's  nature  into  the  intellect, 
the  emotions,  and  the  will.     They  say  that  it  is  the  intellect 


What  is  He?  il 

that  thinks,  the  emotional  part  that  feels,  and  the  will  that 
decides.  We  divide  ourselves  off  into  all  sorts  of  ways  for 
this  practical  purpose.  We  say  the  nerves  feel,  the  eye  sees, 
the  ear  hears,  the  brain  thinks,  the  heart  loves,  the  soul  as- 
pires and  worships.  What  we  need  to  remember,  however, 
is  that  these  divisions  are  purely  arbitrary.  There  is  no 
more  reality  in  them  than  there  is  in  the  lines  of  latitude  and 
longitude  on  the  map,  which  are  drawn  for  the  convenience 
of  the  scholar  in  his  first  lessons  in  geography.  If  you  go 
travelling  over  the  world,  you  find  no  lines  of  latitude  or 
longitude.  If  you  look  from  the  top  of  a  mountain,  the 
landscape  is  all  one  piece  of  the  earth.  You  may  see  hill, 
valley,  brook,  lake,  mountain,  but  these  divisions  are  purely 
arbitrar}' :  it  is  but  one  piece  of  the  planet.  So  concerning 
ourselves.  We  are  not  to  think  of  ourselves  as  trinities  or 
dualities,  but  as  unities.  It  is  not  my  brain  as  something 
separate  from  me  that  thinks :  I  think.  It  is  not  my  heart 
that  feels :  I  feel.  It  is  not  my  nerve  that  suffers  :  I  suffer. 
It  is  not  my  ear  that  hears  :  I  hear.  It  is  not  the  retina  that 
sees:  I  see. 

And  so  I  believe  that  we  are  not  to  regard  ourselves  as 
having  a  soul  or  having  a  spirit  We  are  to  regard  our  nat- 
ures as  a  unit.  I  have  not  a,ny  soul  to  be  saved.  If  I  am 
lost,  if  I  am  astray,  if  I  am  out  of  the  right  path,  I  must  find 
myself  or  be  found.  /  must  be  brought  back  into  the  right 
way.  I  have  no  soul  that  I  can  insure  and  then  forget,  put- 
ting it  into  the  hands  of  the  church,  of  the  minister,  of  the 
ecclesiastical  body,  while  I  go  about  my  worldly  occupations, 
feeling  that  they  will  take  care  of  it  There  is  no  //.  There 
is  only  one,  and  that  is  myself. 

Now,  we  come  to  the  last  question  that  I  shall  ask  of  your 
patience  to  consider  this  morning ;  but  it  is  the  deepest  and 


12  Beliefs  about  Man. 

highest  and  most  important  one  of  all :  that  is  concerning 
the  nature  of  this  self. 

I  am  one ;  but  what  is  this  one  ?  Is  it  one  body  or  one 
soul  ?  Is  it  spirit  ?  This  is  the  great  question  that  deter- 
mines the  place  of  man  in  the  universe. 

There  have  been  attempts,  and  there  are  attempts  being 
made  to-day,  by  those  who  hold  the  materialistic  theory  of 
the  universe,  to  explain  man  simply  as  a  piece  of  mechan- 
ism ;  to  explain  thought,  feeling,  aspiration,  worship,  all 
those  internal  and  high  faculties  and  qualities,  as  the  results 
of  the  molecular  movements  of  the  nerves  and  of  the  brain 
and  the  different  physical  parts  of  which  he  is  composed. 
They  say  that  just  as  the  fragrance  of  a  flower  is,  in  some 
mysterious,  inexplicable  way,  caused  by  the  constituent  ele- 
ments of  that  flower  itself,  as  a  collection  of  material 
particles,  so  man  flowers  out  into  all  that  is  beautiful,  and 
exhales  as  fragrance  in  worship  and  aspiration  toward  God. 
But  that  is  all.  It  is  all  a  mere  matter  of  the  change  of 
elements  of  which  the  body  is  composed.  This  was  the 
belief,  for  example,  of  many  of  the  Indian  philosophers,  the 
belief  of  Buddha  himself  concerning  man.  He  is  the  result 
of  the  parts  of  which  he  is  composed,  said  he ;  and,  when 
you  take  those  parts  to  pieces,  there  is  nothing  left  but  the 
parts.  If  you  take  a  chariot  to  pieces,  taking  off  the  wheels, 
and  separating  part  from  part,  there  is  no  chariot  left.  So 
there  are  many  philosophers  and  scientists  who  tell  us  that, 
when  death  has  torn  down  the  body  of  man  and  separated 
it,  part  from  part,  and  it  has  mingled  with  the  dust  of  the 
earth,  there  is  nothing  of  him  left,  because  he  was  the  result 
of  this  mechanical  arrangement  of  parts. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  here  to  touch  on  the  immortality  of 
the  soul.  I  leave  that  out  of  account,  and  only  deal  with  the 
question  whether  materialism  is  capable  of  explaining  man. 


W/iat  is  Hef  1 3 

Can  materialism  explain  the  facts?  That  is  the  simple 
question.  And  the  answer,  I  believe,  you  will  be  glad  to 
hear, —  whether  you  have  agreed  with  me  in  everything  I 
have  said  or  not, —  you  will  be  glad  to  know  that  I  am  able 
to  say  this  morning  that  the  best  scholarship  of  the  world 
has  settled  it  that  no  theory  of  materialism  by  any  possibility 
can  explain  a  man.  Not  only  that:  it  does  not  even  ap- 
proach the  promise  of  an  explanation  of  him. 

What  is  there  about  a  man  that  it  cannot  explain  ?  I  can 
trace  the  movement  of  the  molecules  of  which  this  body  is 
composed,  from  the  time  I  touch  this  desk,  along  the  lines  of 
the  nerves  up  into  the  brain.  I  can  calculate  what  goes  on 
there,  the  movements  of  all  these  little  infinitesimal  particles. 
I  can  determine  something  concerning  the  nature  of  these 
movements  as  they  are  connected  with  thought  and  feeling ; 
but  the  one  thing  that  cannot  be  determined  is  that  there  is 
any  causal  connection  between  the  thought  or  the  feeling 
and  the  movement  of  the  molecular  particles  of  the  brain 
by  which  the  thought  shall  find  an  explanation  in  those 
movements. 

Here  is  where  materialism  utterly  fails.  It  cannot  possibly 
explain  the  fact  that  I  feel  the  touch  of  that  desk,  and  am 
conscious  of  that  sensation. 

Not  only  that,  but  materialism  also  fails  to  explain  the 
fact  that  man  is  self-conscious.  How  is  it  that  one  particle 
of  matter  should  be  able  to  rise  up  and  look  another  particle 
of  matter  in  the  face,  and  say,  /see  //.  What  makes  the 
distinction  between  the  /  here  and  the  //  there  ?  No  theory 
of  materialism  has  ever  yet  shown  itself  capable  of  answer- 
ing these  questions. 

There  is  one  more  which  it  cannot  explain,  and  that  is  this 
wonderful  thing  that  I  call  personal  identity.  What  is  it  up 
here  in  this  brain,  what  is  it  anywhere   in   this   body,  that 


14  Beliefs  about  Man. 

makes  me  capable  of  remembering,  and  of  saying,  I  was  the 
one  who  ten  years  ago  was  in  California ;  I  was  the  one  who 
last  year  went  through  Europe  ;  who  at  such  a  time  suffered 
under  such  a  sorrow ;  I  was  the  one  who  on  another  occa- 
sion was  thrilled  with  love,  with  hope,  with  some  marvellous 
revelation  of  beauty?  We  know  that  the  particles  that 
compose  this  body  are  in  perpetual  flux.  There  is  no  more 
stability  about  your  body  or  mine  than  about  Niagara  Falls. 
The  only  difference  is  that  the  particles  that  compose  one 
change  more  rapidly  than  those  of  the  other.  But  since  I 
have  stood  here  my  body  has  been  passing  through  the  most 
wonderful  transformations.  Particles  that  were  a  part  of  me 
are  so  no  longer,  and  particles  that  formed  no  part  of  me  are 
so  now.  With  every  breath,  I  take  in  new  materials ;  and 
constantly  old  and  worn-out  material  is  being  exhaled  from 
every  pore.  Look  at  Niagara,  and  you  know  there  is  not 
a  drop  of  water  present  that  was  there  an  hour  ago ;  yet 
Niagara  is  there,  year  after  year.  You  can  explain  that, 
because  it  is  a  current  in  a  fixed  place,  held  in  by  rocky 
banks,  and  fed  by  certain  streams.  But  man  is  not  fixed. 
There  is  no  fixed  source  or  changeless  walls  for  the  material 
particles  that  keep  up  this  wondrous  form.  Yet  I  know 
that  there  is  this  marvellous  change  going  on  in  me  every 
hour  of  my  life.  I  have  had  three,  four,  five  different 
bodies,  since  I  was  a  little  boy  by  mother's  knee.  Yet  I 
was  the  one  who  played  round  mother's  knee.  I  was  the 
one  who  went  with  my  brother  into  the  mysterious  woods, 
that  were  my  first  outlook  into  infinity;  the  one  who  in 
those  old  days  lay  on  my  back  beneath  the  trees,  and  looked 
lip  at  the  clouds  flitting  across  the  sky,  up  at  the  evening 
stars  that  came  out  one  by  one,  and  wondered  over  the 
mystery  of  the  universe.  I  am  the  one  who  learned  to 
pick  out  from  the  great  mass  of  humanity  this  one  and  that 


Wkat  is  He?  15 

for  a  friend,  who  at  last  chose  one  as  a  companion  for  life, 
in  love,  to  make  her  a  part  of  myself.  I  am  the  one  who  has 
borne  these  experiences  of  years  ago  ;  but  yet  there  is  not  a 
particle  of  this  body  as  it  stands  here  to-day  which  went 
through  any  of  those  experiences. 

How  is  it,  then,  that  I  am  the  same  ?  No  theory  of  mate- 
rialism can  possibly  explain  this  great  mystery,  this  wonder, 
that  my  thoughts,  my  feelings,  my  separate  emotions,  the 
experiences  I  go  through  with  to-day,  are  linked  together  in 
one.  I  have  an  emotion  this  minute,  another  five  minutes 
hence,  and  all  through  the  day  my  life  is  made  up  of  isolated 
and  separate  sensations.  Where  is  the  thread  that  binds 
them  all  in  one,  so  that  I  can  say.  These  are  all  mine  ?  Ma- 
terialism cannot  explain  it. 

Though  we  cannot  tell  what  that  thread  is,  yet  it  is  possi- 
ble that  I  am  essentially  what  I  mean  when  I  say  "  spirit." 
And  it  is  possible  on  this  theory  to  give  a  comprehensible 
and  rational  picture  of  the  world.  Although  from  the  mate- 
rialistic stand-point  I  cannot  understand  the  fact  that  I  think 
and  feel,  yet  from  the  stand-point  that  I  am  essentially 
thought  and  feeling  I  can  form  a  rational  theory  of  the  mate- 
rial universe. 

There  is  no  time  this  morning  to  even  hint  how  this  is 
done.  I  simply  make  this  assertion,  supported  by  the  best 
philosophy,  thought,  and  science  of  the  world,  and  say,  as  the 
last  outcome  of  our  discussion,  that,  up  to  the  present  point 
in  the  progress  of  human  knowledge,  it  is  utterly  unphilo- 
sophical,  utterly  unscientific  for  a  man  to  be  a  materialist; 
while  the  best  scholarship  of  the  world  tells  him  that  he  must, 
for  the  present  at  any  rate,  think  of  himself  as  essentially 
what  we  mean  when  we  say  "spirit." 

Man,  then,  is  the  animal  who  has  developed  a  conscious- 
ness of  himself,  the  animal  who  has  learned  to  improve  his 


1 6  Beliefs  about  Man, 

surroundings,  to  think  of  his  origin,  to  dream  of  his  destiny. 
Man  is  the  animal  who  has  risen  to  such  a  thought  of  him- 
self as  to  be  able  to  say,  I  have  done  wrong,  I  ought  to  do 
right,  recognizing  thus  the  moral  law  in  its  sweep  through 
the  universe.  Man  is  the  animal  who  has  risen  to  the  con- 
ception of  the  kinship  that  binds  to  him  all  the  forms  of  life 
on  the  globe,  and  who  feels  ever  growing  in  his  heart  the 
sense  of  this  kinship.  He  is  the  one  being  who  is  con- 
sciously beneficent.  Man  is  the  animal  who,  above  all  ma- 
terial welfare,  above  all  moral  considerations,  has  learned  to 
think,  as  he  looks  out  over  this  universe,  of  the  great  mys- 
tery that  lies  hidden  at  its  heart.  He  alone  has  been  able  to 
think  that  this  mysterious  power  is  essentially  a  good  power, 
because  the  universe  grows  ever  toward  that  which  is  better, 
age  after  age.  He  has  been  able  to  think  of  this  power  as 
holding  some  mysterious  relationship  to  that  which  he  feels 
himself  to  be. 

Man,  then,  is  the  animal  who  has  been  able  to  sweep 
through  all  this  experience  until  at  last  he  stands  on  the 
highest  summit  of  attained  civilization,  never  for  a  moment 
dreaming  that  he  is  at  the  end,  but  ever  looking  on  to  some- 
thing further  and  higher  that  is  before  ;  believing  there  is 
infinite  possibility  of  progression  because  he  believes  in  an 
infinite  life  at  the  heart  of  things,  and  because  he  believes 
in  a  kinship  that  binds  him  to  this  infinite  life.  Man,  then, 
is  the  animal  that  has  learned  to  think  of  himself,  to  think 
of  right,  to  think  God ;  and  has  ended  by  thinking  that  he 
is  a  son  of  God. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN. 


It  goes  without  sa5dng  that,  if  one  is  to  improve  the  condi- 
tion of  mankind,  he  must  first  understand  something  correctly 
concerning  the  elements  of  human  nature,  and  the  forces  and 
laws  by  which  it  has  come  to  be  what  it  is.  If  you  give  a 
man  your  watch  to  put  in  order,  he  must  be  one  who  knows 
something  about  the  mechanism  of  the  watch,  the  principles 
on  which  it  runs,  so  that  he  can  discover  what  it  lacks,  and 
be  able  to  supply  it.  And  yet  there  are  a  great  many  people 
in  the  world  —  few  I  hope  here  —  who,  listening  to  me  this 
morning,  would  say :  "  All  very  well  for  a  lecture,  but  that  is 
not  a  sermon.  It  is  not  a  proper  thing  for  a  Sunday  morn- 
ing." If  I  should  spend  an  hour  in  outlining  and  drawing 
lessons  from  the  creation,  as  it  is  written  in  Genesis,  they 
would  think  that  that  was  sacred,  that  that  was  preaching. 
In  other  words,  a  man  who  relates  and  draws  lessons  from 
unfounded  human  traditions  and  legends  is  popularly  re- 
garded as  treating  sacred  themes  in  a  proper  manner  on  a 
sacred  day ;  while  he  who  humbly  and  sincerely,  looking  at 
the  facts  of  the  world,  attempts  to  detail  things  of  eternal 
truth,  as  manifested  in  the  nature  of  things,  he,  they  say,  is 
talking  science,  he  is  lecturing,  he  is  secular.  You  know  very 
well  that  I  believe  nothing  of  the  kind ;  but,  even  were  it  so, 
I  can  do  no  otherwise.  I  must  be  secular ;  I  must  lecture. 
Let  others  treat  sacred  themes,  and  preach. 

The  theme  we  have  in  hand,  then,  this  morning  is  to  trace. 


1 8  Beliefs  about  Man. 

if  we  can,  the  origin  of  man.  Wliere  did  he  come  from  and 
how  ?  What  are  the  principles  underlying  his  development  ? 
We  want  to  find  out  first  what  man  is  ;  how  he  has  come  to 
be  what  he  is  ;  then  to  notice  his  imperfections,  and  discover, 
if  we  may,  by  what  process  they  can  be  helped.  We  want 
to  notice  how  far  he  is  developed,  and  then  discover,  if  pos- 
sible, by  what  means  he  may  be  made  to  develop  further  and 
higher  still. 

Let  us  be  perfectly  clear,  however,  as  to  the  point  that  we 
are  after  this  morning.  I  do  not  propose  to  attempt  the  im- 
possible. I  shall  not  then  look  after  the  ultimate  origin  of 
anything.  Suppose,  for  example,  I  could  discover  the  "miss- 
ing link  "  about  which  so  much  has  been  said  and  written, 
connecting  man  with  the  animal  world  beneath  him.  Sup- 
pose I  could  go  further  still,  down  and  down  and  down,  to- 
ward the  very  origin  of  life  itself,  and  find  the  first  little  globule 
of  protoplasm,  inorganized,  distinguished  from  dead  matter 
only  by  the  fact  that  this  little  drop  is  not  dead.  Suppose  I 
could  go  further  than  that,  and  trace  the  development  of  the 
one  out  of  the  other,  and  prove  the  theory  of  spontaneous 
generation  to  be  true :  what  then  .''  I  would  be  no  nearer 
the  ultimate  origin  of  things  than  I  was  when  I  started  out. 
Eternity  would  still  be  beyond  me,  and  still  would  the  ques- 
tion rise,  whence  came  the  material  out  of  which  this  living 
matter  was  developed  ?  By  what  process  did  it  come  1  Who 
made  it  ?  Did  it  make  itself  1  Did  it  always  exist  ?  If  it 
did  not  always  exist  and  did  not  make  itself,  who  did  make 
it  ?  And,  if  some  being  made  that,  then  I  should  have  the 
same  questions  again  concerning  this  being.  Did  he  exist 
always  ?  If  not,  did  he  make  himself ;  and,  if  not,  who  did 
make  him  ?  And  then  the  same  questions  again  concerning 
the  new  being,  and  so  on  and  on  forever.  The  question  then 
of  the  ultimate  origin  of  anything,  though  we  may  put  it  into 


Origin  of  Man.  19 

words,  is,  if  you  will  consider  it  carefully,  simply  unthink- 
able. It  is  inconceivable.  We  may  as  well,  first  as  last,  recog- 
nize the  fact  that  we  must  think  within  the  limits  of  our  own 
human  nature.  We  cannot  overleap  the  boundaries  of  the 
horizon.  We  must  stand  where  we  are,  and  look  out  as  far 
as  we  can,  investigate  as  much  as  possible.  But  to  suppose 
the  human  mind  will  ever  be  able  to  solve  the  ultimate  origin 
of  anything  seems  to  me  simply  a  delusion.  We  shall  at- 
tempt, then,  nothing  so  ambitious  as  this. 

We  are  here :  we  are  what  we  are.  There  was  a  time  in 
the  history  of  this  planet  when  we  were  not  here,  when  the 
world  was  occupied  only  by  lower  forms  of  life.  There 
was  a  time  when  these  lower  forms  of  life  even  were  not 
here,  when  there  was  not  one  living,  breathing  thing  upon 
the  planet.  Sometime,  somewhere,  somehow,  man  came  to 
be.  The  problem  before  us  then  is  simply  to  answer  the 
question  how. 

You  are  familiar  with  the  traditional  story  to  which  I 
alluded  last  Sunday.  Six  thousand  years  ago,  Adam,  a 
perfect,  complete,  typical  man,  was  created  and  placed  in  a 
garden.  Human  life  then  was  very  long.  Men  lived  three, 
five,  eight  hundred,  or  a  thousand  years.  Two  thousand 
years  passed  away,  or  nearly  that,  when  the  world  had  be- 
come so  wicked  that  the  Lord  could  endure  it  no  longer, 
and  he  drowned  them  all, —  all,  with  the  exception  of  eight 
persons,  Noah,  his  wife,  his  three  sons  and  their  wives,  who 
floated  in  an  ark  above  the  universal  ocean,  and  when  it  sub- 
sided found  themselves  on  the  summit  of  a  mountain  in  Asia. 
These  eight  came  forth  from  the  ark  a  little  more  than  four 
thousand  years  ago  ;  and  from  that  little  beginning,  within 
that  limit  of  time,  the  entire  world  has  developed  as  it  is  to- 
day. This  is  the  traditional  theory.  Why  can  we  not  accept 
it  ?     I  will  give  you  in  brief  some  hints  why  we  cannot. 


20  Beliefs  about  Man. 

In  the  first  place,  we  cannot  accept  this  story  for  the  simple 
reason  that  we  have  traced  it  and  found  it  to  be  an  unau- 
thentic legend.  It  did  not  even  originate  with  the  Hebrews 
who  have  given  us  our  Bible.  We  have  found  out  that  they 
imported  it  late  in  the  history  of  their  career  from  Babylon. 
It  was  not  original  even  with  the  Babylonians.  They  derived 
it  from  the  Akkadians,  a  people  who  had  developed  a  wide- 
spread civilization  in  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates  before 
Babylon  itself  was  built.  We  have  traced  the  story,  and  found 
it  not  to  be  history,  but  a  legend  that  the  early  Hebrews, 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  and  Moses  himself,  knew  nothing 
about.  It  came  into  Israel  about  the  time  of  the  captivit}^, 
brought  with  them  probably  on  their  return  from  their 
sojourn  in  Babylon. 

Another  reason.  We  find  arguments  against  it  in  the 
ruins  left  of  ancient  civilizations.  Go  to  Egypt,  and  there 
alone  are  arguments  writ  in  stone  that  make  it  simply  im- 
possible for  us  to  believe  any  such  story  as  this  concerning 
the  origin  of  the  human  race.  We  find  there  a  highly 
wrought,  completely  developed  civilization, —  empire,  litera- 
ture, religion,  language,  everything  that  marks  a  high  and 
wide-spread  culture.  We  find  it  when  ?  We  find  it  in  full 
career  further  back  than  the  historic  date  of  the  flood  itself, 
as  it  comes  to  us  in  these  chapters  of  Genesis.*  The  ruins 
of  those  old  civilizations,  of  which  this  may  be  taken  as  an 
illustration  and  specimen,  forbid  our  believing  that  this  can 
be  accepted  as  a  true  account  of  the  history  of  man. 

Another  argument  we  find  in  language.  The  stor}^  is,  as 
we  find  it  in  Genesis,  that  all  mankind  spoke  one  common 
speech  until  the  Tower  of  Babel  was  built,  and  then  the  Lord, 
in  his  wrath,  to  frustrate  the  plans  of  the  ambitious  men  who 

*  Note. — Sir  John  Lubbock,  in  his  Jubilee  Address  before  the  British  Association, 
says  the  Pyramids  are  probably  six  thousand  years  old. 


Origin  of  Man.  21 

thought  to  erect  a  tower  high  enough  to  scale  heaven,  scattered 
them  over  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  confused  their  tongues, 
and  from  that — which  also  occurred  about  four  thousand 
years  ago  —  have  come  all  the  different  languages  of  the 
human  race. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  science  of  language,  as 
developed  within  the  last  fifty  years,  makes  it  impossible  for 
any  man  who  is  intelligent  or  acquainted  with  facts  to  believe 
that  any  such  a  thing  was  possible.  We  can  group  together 
the  languages  of  the  world,  and  find  that  they  fall  under 
a  few  grand  divisions.  Many  of  the  languages  of  Europe, 
our  own,  the  Latin  and  Greek,  all  run  back  to  our  Aryan 
forefathers  in  Asia.  Even  in  regard  to  this,  we  cannot  get 
back  to  the  source ;  but  we  have  gone  as  far  as  the  time  of 
Babel,  and  we  find  the  very  language  we  speak  there  in  its 
rudiments.  Yet  we  are  not  at  the  spring.  We  can  trace 
back  the  Turanian,  the  Semitic,  and  these  different  families, 
but  find  no  trace  of  their  coming  together.  It  is  as  if  you 
followed  up  three  or  four  different  rivers,  under  the  impres- 
sion that  they  came  from  one  common  spring,  and  yet,  going 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  miles,  find  them  no  nearer  to- 
gether than  when  you  started,  so  that  you  are  compelled  to 
believe  that  the  common  source-  is,  at  any  rate,  far,  far  away. 
So  we  can  trace  back  the  languages  spoken  on  the  earth 
beyond  the  time  of  Babel  itself,  and  no  trace  of  their  coming 
together.  Indeed,  the  facts  of  the  science  of  language,  in- 
stead of  permitting  us  to  believe  that  the  human  race  did 
speak  one  language  at  the  first,  compel  us  rather  to  believe 
the  direct  opposite :  that  from  innumerable  dialects,  spring- 
ing up  naturally  all  over  the  earth,  there  has  been  a  con- 
solidation, until  at  last  out  of  them  have  come  a  few,  great, 
strong,  living  languages,  capable  of  growth  and  of  absorbing 
these  lesser  forms  and  divergencies  of  speech.     And  those 


22  Beliefs  about  Man. 

best  versed  in  the  history  of  this  development  tell  us  that 
there  is  hardly  a  question  that  the  outcome  is  to  be  a  prac- 
tical unity ;  a  few,  two  or  three  possibly,  great  languages 
being  common  to  the  civilized  world,  and  the  one  that  is  to 
be  most  wide-spread  of  all,  our  own. 

.  There  is  one  other  argument  that  makes  it  impossible  for 
us  to  hold  this  theory,  and  that  is  the  problem  of  race  devel- 
opment. If  we  believe  this  old  story,  what  must  we  accept.'* 
We  must  accept  something  so  hard  that  no  scientific  Darwin- 
ian would  dare  to  propose  it  to  the  intelligence  of  the  world. 
We  must  believe  that  inside  of  four  thousand  years  the  negro 
of  Africa,  the  Chinaman,  the  North  American  Indian,  the 
Hottentot,  the  Patagonian,  the  Lapp,  the  Caucasian,  all  the 
different  types  or  races  on  earth,  have  sprung  from  one 
family  of  Shemites.  And  yet  we  go  to  Egypt,  and  we  find  a 
refutation  of  the  possibility  of  so  wild  and  absurd  a  dream. 
We  find  on  monuments  of  Egypt,  reaching  back  to  the  time 
of  the  flood  itself,  outlines  of  negroes  as  clearly  developed 
in  type  as  they  are  to-day.  We  find  also  the  Asiatic  and  the 
Egyptian  types.  So  we  know  these  divergencies  of  race  are 
at  least  older  than  the  time  of  the  flood,  older  than  the 
tower  of  Babel,  older  than  any  age  which  the  Bible  permits 
us  to  hold.  And  yet  men  who  hold  that  these  tremendous 
changes  have  been  wrought  out  by  natural  processes  inside 
of  four  thousand  years  object  to  the  Darwinian  theory,  be- 
cause they  say  the  world  has  not  existed  long  enough  for  all 
these  marvellous  developments  to  have  taken  place.  They 
object  to  a  very  slight  wonder,  and  ask  us  to  believe  an  im- 
possibility. 

Running  thus  briefly  over  these  arguments,  let  me  come  to 
comparatively  modern  times,  and  show  you  how  the  problem 
has  SDrung  up  within  the  last  hundred  years. 


Origin  of  Man.  23 

Geology  you  know  to  be  a  very  modern  science  ;  but  it  has 
revolutionized  the  thought  of  man  concerning  the  world  in 
which  we  live,  until  we  know  that,  by  processes  and  forces  at 
work  everywhere  around  us,  this  old  earth  has  been  devel- 
oped into  its  present  condition  through  periods  of  indefinite 
and  unimaginable  time.  The  six  thousand  years  theory  has 
been  stretched  and  stretched  and  stretched,  by  the  pressure 
of  facts,  until,  like  a  dilated  soap-bubble,  it  has  burst  and 
vanished  into  air.  Even  those  who  try  to  hold  still  to  the 
inspiration  of  Genesis  have  been  compelled  to  change  the 
"  days  "  of  the  Bible  to  periods  of  uncounted  ages. 

Now  comes  the  new  science  of  palaeontology ;  that  which 
deals  with  the  fossil  remains  of  plants  and  animals  that  are 
discovered  in  the  rocky  strata  under  our  feet.  What  are 
the  facts  in  regard  to  this?  The  question  was  started  in 
Europe  by  the  discovery  of  some  marine  shells  in  the  Alps, 
along  the  pathway  of  the  journey  between  France  and  Italy. 
Marine  shells  in  the  Alps !  Do  you  wonder  that  theology 
started  ?  It  must  explain  these  things.  And,  unless  it  could 
explain  them  in  someway  consistent  with  its  traditional  story, 
the  discovery  of  these  fossil  shells  would  be  destined  to 
revolutionize  the  thought  of  the  world.  How  did  they  come 
there  ?  Theology  said  the  flood  brought  them.  When  that 
was  disproved,  it  said  they  were  freaks  of  nature.  When 
that  was  disproved,  it  said  the  devil  made  tliem  to  mislead 
the  thoughts  of  men.  And,  when  they  could  hold  that  no 
longer,  they  said  God  made  them  as  a  mere  pleasantry,  as  a 
sort  of  imitation  of  the  things  that  really  existed.  Voltaire, 
having  no  intimation  of  the  decisions  of  modern  science, 
said,  No,  the  flood  didn't  bring  them  there  :  they  were  simply 
dropped  by  pilgrims  from  France  to  Rome.  No,  said  science, 
—  and  its  answer  is  that  which  the  intelligence  of  the  world 
to-day  accepts  as  unquestioned, —  these  are  genuine  remains 


24  Beliefs  about  Man. 

of  marine  shells  ;  and  they  were  deposited  there  in  precisely 
the  same  way  that  sea-shells  are  deposited  to-day.  The 
place  where  these  were  found  has  been  under  the  sea.  And 
this  made  the  revolution  in  the  thought  of  the  civilized  world 
of  which  I  have  spoken,  because  the  sea  had  never  been 
there  in  any  historic  time.  This  stretched  the  thought  of 
man  back  and  back,  opening  up  a  vista  of  myriads  of  ages ; 
and  it  placed  the  origin  of  life  far  beyond  the  six  thousand 
years  in  the  dim  distance  of  unimagined  time. 

The  science  of  palaeontology,  then,  has  settled  it  that  the 
fossils  which  are  discovered  in  the  rocks  are  really  the  re- 
mains of  creatures  that  were  once  alive  and  in  their  natural 
element  and  condition ;  that  they  were  placed  there,  and 
covered  up  in  the  process  of  the  deposition  of  sediment, 
precisely  as  shells  and  bits  of  leaves  and  twigs  are  being 
covered  up  on  the  seashore  to-day,  by  layers  of  sand  being 
washed  over  them  and  hiding  them  away,  in  what,  in  future 
ages,  will  be  rocky  strata,  to  be  dug  up  again  and  uncovered. 
What  does  all  this  mean  ?  What  are  the  necessary  inferences 
from  things  like  these  ?  It  means  that  life  has  been  on  this 
planet  millions  and  millions  of  years. 

The  wise  men  that  have  developed  this  science  for  us  have 
found  out  another  thing:  that  there  is  a  natural  development 
in  the  structure  and  complexity  of  the  forms  of  life  from 
those  that  are  found  lowest  in  the  rock  to  those  that  approach 
nearest  the  position  of  man.  That  is,  that  these  rocks  have 
been  laid  dov>'n  one  on  the  top  of  the  other.  If  I  should 
begin  liere  to  pile  up  newspapers  and  place  between  them 
leaves  and  twigs,  and  then  more  newspapers,  and  then  an- 
other layer  of  organic  forms,  and  so  on,  you  would  know 
perfectly  well  that  the  one  at  the  bottom  was  the  oldest,  or 
the  one  first  placed  in  position.  That  is  the  argument  of 
common-sense.     All  these  marvellous  results  have  been  thus 


Origin  of  Man.  2$ 

developed.  We  know  what  are  the  lowest  and  what  are  the 
highest.  We  find  the  simplest  forms  of  life  lowest,  and  we 
find  a  constant  development  in  structure  and  complexity  as 
we  approach  the  position  of  man.  It  appears,  then,  like  a 
process  of  development  at  first  sight.  It  is  as  natural  as  the 
development  of  an  oak  out  of  an  acorn,  or  from  the  first 
twig  that  shoots  above  the  soil. 

Again,  there  are  places  in  this  rock  record  where  there 
are  blanks,  as  though  in  this  book  I  should  tear  out  here 
twenty-five  leaves,  and  here  fifty,  and  here  another  number, 
leaving  the  book  a  fragment.  And  yet,  suppose  I  should  do 
that,  and  you  should  pick  it  up,  not  knowing  how  it  came  so, 
you  would  feel  perfectly  certain  that  originally  all  the  leaves 
were  there,  would  you  not  ?  No  man  would  be  so  foolish  as 
to  make  a  book,  and  number  it  for  a  few  pages  consecutively, 
and  then  leave  out  a  few  pages.  You  would  say  the  natural 
inference  was  that  in  the  first  place  the  book  was  complete. 
Or  suppose  you  should  go  into  my  library  and  find  Gibbon's 
History  of  Rome  in  twelve  volumes,  or  rather  find  seven  or 
eight  volumes,  and  the  others  missing,  and  the  places  where 
they  had  stood  vacant.  Would  you  not  feel  perfectly  sure 
that  in  the  first  place  I  had  the  full  set  ?  I  would  not  have 
bought  a  mutilated  copy.  Originally,  they  were  all  there, 
though  some  may  be  lent  or  on  the  library  table. 

Another  illustration.  Suppose  I  should  find  between  here 
and  Worcester  a  series  of  milestones,  with  one  and  two  miss- 
ing. I  begin  and  count  from  three.  Three,  four,  five,  and  six 
are  there,  then  five  or  six  stones  are  missing.  Again,  between 
twenty  and  thirty,  five  or  six  are  missing  :  then  they  run  on 
up  to  forty.  Would  not  you  say, —  finding  these  spaces  thus 
distributed,  and  yet  finding  the  same  number  of  miles  pre- 
cisely in  the  spaces  as  where  the  series  are  complete, —  would 
you  not  say  that  originally  all  the  forty  were  there,  and  that 


26  Beliefs  about  Man. 

in  some  way  the  others  had  been  thrown  down,  displaced,  or 
carried  away  ?  Something  precisely  similar  to  this  is  found 
in  the  rock  record  from  the  lowest,  simplest  forms  up  to  man, 
—  at  the  bottom  the  simplest  form,  and  man  at  the  top,  the 
completion,  the  flower  and  fruitage  of  the  tree  of  life.  But 
we  find  breaks ;  and  we  are  not  able  at  present,  with  any 
organic  remains  discovered,  to  bridge  over  these  breaks. 
The  inference  is  that  these  missing-  forms  were  there  at  the 
start,  but  that,  in  the  ten  million  changes  that  have  passed 
over  the  old  earth  in  its  history,  these  records  have  been 
wiped  out.  Why,  the  wonder  is  not  that  these  organic  re- 
mains are  now  and  again  missing :  the  marvel  rather  is  that 
we  find  the  record  so  nearly  complete.  The  result,  then,  of 
rational  thought  on  the  subject,  compels  intelligent  men  to 
believe  that  this  rock  record  originally  was  complete,  that 
down  below  were  simple  forms,  followed  by  more  complex 
ones  until  we  come  to  man. 

Now,  the  question  is.  Do  these  different  forms  of  life  repre- 
sent special  acts  of  creation  1  Was  a  very  simple  form  of 
life  created  and  then  wiped  out  of  existence,  and  then  an- 
other created  and  that  wiped  out,  and  then  another,  a  little 
higher,  and  so  on,  by  innumerable  acts  of  separate  creation ; 
or  did  they  develop  one  from  the  other  ?  The  facts  are  such 
that  every  intelligent  student  has  already  decided  that  the 
theory  of  the  development  of  one  form  from  another  is  the 
only  one  that  is  consistent  with  the  facts  and  acceptable  to 
the  rational  mind. 

To  make  the  argument  very  simple,  suppose  I  should  take 
a  crab-apple,  and  prove  to  you,  what  all  intelligent  people 
know,  that  this  crab  was  originally  the  only  apple  in  the 
world,  and  then  show  you  all  the  marvellous  forms  of  the 
apples  that  have  some  way  come  into  existence  since  that 
time,  would  you  be  inclined  to  accept  the  fact  that  they  all 


Origin  of  Man.  2/ 

developed  from  the  crab-apple,  or  would  you  believe  that 
they  were  specially  created  ?  We  know  that  this  is  a  process 
of  development.  Every  gardener  knows  that  he  can  develop 
new  forms  of  almost  any  plant  or  shrub  or  fruit.  Then,  by 
what  we  know,  passing  from  the  known  to  the  unknown,  we 
argue,  as  every  rational  man  must,  that  there  has  been  a 
process  of  development  of  life  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest, 
through  all  the  ages.  But  now  the  question  comes,  and  here 
is  the  point  where  many  scientific  men,  and  almost  all  theolo- 
gians, hesitate.  They  grant  the  development  of  all  these 
forms  of  life  until  you  come  to  man.  Shall  we  include  him 
in  this  process,  or  shall  we  say  there  must  have  been  some 
new  power  manifested  here  ?  What  we  call  Nature,  what  I 
believe  to  be  God,  in  and  working  through  the  laws  of  things, 
is  capable  of  developing  all  these  wondrous  forms  until  we 
come  to  man.  Now,  they  say  there  must  have  been  a  special 
act  of  creation  in  order  to  account  for  him.  Why?  They 
can  give  no  reason  that  is,  to  me,  worthy  of  serious  thought. 
It  is  very  largely,  with  a  great  many,  a  matter  of  egotism. 
They  do  not  like  to  feel  that  they  have  so  many  poor  rela- 
tions. They  do  not  like  to  feel  that  they  are  organically 
connected  with  the  animals,  way  down  to  the  first  globule  of 
protoplasm.  They  say  :  "  I  am  a  man.  I  am  superior  to  all 
the  rest  of  the  world,  and  God  must  have  made  me  in  a 
different  fashion  from  that  which  he  used  in  all  the  other 
marvels  of  the  universe.*'  That  is  a  little  lingering  trace  of 
egotistic  prejudice,  nothing  else. 

There  is  another  feeling.  They  say  :  "  If  I  shall  grant 
that  man  has  been  developed  from  the  animal  world,  why,  I 
may  wake  up  some  morning  and  find  that  I  am  nothing  but 
an  animal."  But  this  you  must  keep  in  mind :  Whatever 
theory  you  accept  as  to  how  you  came  here  on  earth,  or  how 
you  came  to  be  what  you  are,  the  simple  fact  will  remain  for- 


28  Beliefs  about  Man. 

ever  that  you  are  what  you  are,  and  nothing  else.  No  theory 
as  to  how  you  came  here  will  change  your  nature  one  single 
iota.  Is  there  any  necessity,  then,  for  calling  in  some  other 
power,  some  new  manifestation  of  the  creative  ability  to  jDro- 
duce  this  wonderful  result, —  man?  As  I  had  occasion  to 
tell  you  last  Sunday,  man  shares  almost  every  faculty  of  his 
whole  nature  with  the  animal  world  beneath  him.  It  has 
been  discovered  that  you  cannot  possibly  find  the  border 
line,  for  example,  between  the  animal  and  vegetable  world. 
There  are  forms  concerning  which  the  wisest  living  cannot 
tell  whether  they  are  animal  or  vegetable.  They  put  them 
sometimes  on  this  side  of  the  line  and  sometimes  on  that. 
You  cannot  find  the  exact  line  between  the  animal  and 
vegetable,  any  more  than  between  day  and  night.  It  passes 
through  a  gradation  of  twilight  that  rubs  out  all  marks  and 
lines.  No  man  has  found  the  line  between  the  animal  and 
the  human.  There  is  such  a  gradual  transition  from  one  to 
the  other  that  it  is  impossible  to  tell  whether  it  is  anything 
more  than  a  difference  of  degree. 

Let  us  look  straight  in  the  face  this  problem  as  to  the 
origin  of  man.  There  are  just  three  thinkable  theories  that 
an  intelligent  man  can  hold.  We  may  think  that  man  was 
created  out  of  nothing,  or  out  of  the  dust  beneath  our  feet. 
That  is  one  theory,  the  popular  one,  the  theory  of  the  Church. 
Another  theory  is  that  man  may  have  been  born  from  an- 
cestors very  much  unlike  himself ;  as  if,  for  example,  a  bird 
were  hatched  from  the  spawn  of  a  fish,  or  as  though  a  rose 
were  developed  out  of  some  wayside  shrub  that  never  bore  a 
flower.  That  is  a  theory  of  which  you  can  think.  The  third 
theory  is  that  man  was  born  from  ancestors  somewhat  differ- 
ent from,  but  very  much  like,  himself, — for  example,  to  recur 
to  an  illustration  I  have  already  made  familiar  to  you,  as 
though  we  assume,  what  we  know,  that  a  pippin  was  devel- 
oped from  a  crab-apple, —  an  apple,  though  considerably  un- 


Origin  of  Man.  29 

like  itself,  still,  in  all  essential  peculiarities  and  particulars, 
more  like  than  unlike. 

Let  us  glance  at  these,  and  see  which  one  we  must  accept. 
The  creation  theory  says  man  was  created  suddenly,  out  of 
the  dust  of  the  earth.  Try  to  get  a  picture  of  that  in  your 
mind.  God,  of  course,  according  to  the  theory,  is  invisible, 
although  Genesis  tells  us  that  he  came  down  and  walked  in 
the  garden.  We  are  to  think  then  of  the  bare  ground  and 
the  blank  air.  Not  a  man  on  earth,  not  a  man  having  ever 
been  on  earth  ;  then  suddenly,  in  an  instant,  where  there  was 
simply  the  bare  ground  and  the  blank  air,  a  full-grown  man  ! 
That  is  the  creation  theory,  though  hardly  worthy  the  name 
of  a  theor)%  because  a  theory  professes,  at  any  rate,  to  deal 
with  and  explain  facts.  But  consider  for  a  moment  that 
there  does  not  exist  on  the  face  of  the  earth  one  single  frayed 
rag  or  shred  of  proof  that  anything  ever  came  into  being 
in  such  a  fashion  as  that.  You  remember  how  the  little  boy 
posed  his  father  by  asking  him  whether  God  could  do  every- 
thing, and,  when  he  told  him  he  could,  the  boy  asked  if  God 
could  make  a  two-year-old  colt  in  fifteen  minutes.  The 
problem  of  making  a  two-year-old  colt  in  fifteen  minutes  is 
very  simple  compared  with  that  of  making  a  full-grown  man 
in  no  time.  It  is  enough  then  to  say,  in  regard  to  this,  that 
there  does  not  exist  in  the  world  one  single  particle  of  proof 
that  any  such  thing  ever  occurred. 

Take  the  next  theory,,  that  man  was  born  from  parents 
much  unlike  himself.  Again,  we  must  say  that  there  is  not 
the  slightest  proof  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that  anything  ever 
came  into  existence  in  that  way.  Trace  it  all  the  way 
through  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms,  clear  down  to 
the  lowest  forms,  and  we  find  that  the  antecedent  parent 
form  is  substantially  like  that  which  it  has  produced.  There 
may  be  variations.     There  are  variations,  many  of  them.     No 


30  Beliefs  about  Man. 

child  is  precisely  like  its  father  or  its  mother ;  and  yet  it  is 
very  much  like  both  of  them  in  all  essential  particulars,  dif- 
fering only  here  and  there  in  minor  matters.  Now,  then,  I 
repeat,  there  is  no  proof  that  anything  in  the  world  ever  came 
into  being  after  the  fashion  which  this  theory  indicates. 

What  have  we  left.?  That  man  was  born  from  parents 
with  which  he  was  genetically  connected,  very  much  like 
himself,  slightly  unlike.  What  is  this  theory  ?  This  is  noth- 
ing more  nor  less  than  Darwinism.  What  about  the  proof 
of  this  ?  All  the  proof  we  have,  whether  complete  or  not, — 
find  as  many  missing  links  as  you  please,  find  as  many  breaks 
in  the  evidence  as  you  will, —  all  the  proof  we  have  is  that 
living  forms,  both  vegetable  and  animal,  have  come  into 
existence,  and  do  come  into  existence  in  precisely  this  way. 

The  intelligent  world,  then,  is  placed  in  this  position. 
There  are  three  possible  theories  as  to  the  origin  of  man : 
two  are  utterly  lacking  in  proof;  the  other  one,  whatever 
defects  there  may  be  in  the  evidence,  has  at  least  some 
proof,  has  indeed  a  good  deal  of  proof.  Which  of  the  three, 
then,  must  an  intelligent  man  accept  ?  I  believe  the  day  will 
come,  yea,  now  is,  when  the  .man  who  expresses  his  disbelief 
in  this  theory  of  the  origin  of  man  will  be  doing  one  of  two 
things, —  either  he  will  be  impeaching  his  own  knowledge  of 
facts,  or  impeaching  his  power  to  judge  as  to  the  value  of 
proof. 

Now  for  two  or  three  results  or  lessons  springing  out  of 
our  theme.  I  have  touched  on  one  already  ;  but  it  is  so  im- 
portant that  I  wish  to  touch  on  it  again.  Men  argue  against 
this  scientific  theory  of  the  origin  of  man,  because  they  fear 
that,  somehow  or  other,  something  vital,  something  precious 
in  their  natures,  is  gomg  to  be  endangered.  But  just  think, 
friends  !  Here  is  an  oak-tree.  Suppose  we  get  around  it 
and  fight  about  the  way,  the  process,  by  which  it  has  come  to 


Origin  of  Man.  31 

be  an  oak.  When  we  have  done  that,  and  got  through,  it  is 
an  oak  iust  the  same,  isn't  it  ?  Your  theory  or  mine  does  not 
change  its  nature  a  particle.  And  so  in  regard  to  our  man- 
hood :  we  are  men,  no  matter  where  we  came  from,  no  matter 
through  what  stages  of  development  we  have  arrived  at  our 
present  position.  We  are  what  we  are :  no  matter  if  once  all 
the  life  on  the  earth  was  a  little  globule  of  inorganized  pro- 
toplasm, no  matter  if  beyond  that  there  was  nothing  living, 
no  matter  if  out  of  that  we  have  been  developed,  still  are  not 
those  words  of  Shakspere  relevant  and  beautiful  as  ever : 
"  What  a  piece  of  work  is  a  man  !  How  noble  in  reason  ! 
how  infinite  in  faculties  !  in  form  and  moving,  how  express 
and  admirable !  in  action,  how  like  an  angel  !  in  appre- 
hension, how  like  a  god  "  .?  Still  it  is  true  that  his  thoughts 
wander  through  eternity,  looking  before  and  after.  Still  it  is 
true  that  Shakspere  lived  and  wrote,  that  the  poets  have 
given  us  their  grand  creations.  Still  it  is  true  that  Jesus 
walked  in  the  villages  of  Galilee,  teaching  his  beautiful 
parables  and  everlasting  truths  ;  that  he  defied  the  orthodoxy 
of  Jerusalem  in  the  interest  of  the  new  and  grander  definition 
of  man.  Science,  civilization,  literature,  the  achievements  of 
man,  are;  no  matter  by  what  process  they  came  to  be. 

One  other  point.  The  future  destiny  of  man  remains  just 
where  it  was,  no  matter  what  theory  we  hold  of  his  origin. 
A  great  many  people  are  afraid  that,  if  they  admit  the  truth 
that  they  have  been  developed  from  the  lower  forms  of  life, 
they  are  going  to  lose  their  souls  and  their  hope  of  immortal- 
ity. If  we  are  made  out  of  the  dust,  where  did  we  get  our 
immortal  souls?  Suppose  I  was  developed  out  of  some 
lower  form  of  animal  life,  is  there  any  more  mystery  about 
the  soul  than  on  the  other  theory  ?  I  am  what  I  am,  on 
either  theory.  If  I  am  destined  to  survive  the  shock  of 
death  and  to  continue  in  my  full  career,  then  that  is  true,  no 


32  Beliefs  about  Man. 

matter  where  I  came  from.  If  it  is  not  true,  no  theory  of 
creation  will  help  the  matter  at  all.  I,  for  one,  no  matter 
what  theory  men  may  hold  in  regard  to  this,  should  not  be 
ready  to  give  up  my  hope.  Since  some  power  has  showed 
itself  capable  of  making  me  what  I  am,  is  it  any  greater 
wonder  or  mystery  to  suppose  and  hope  that  this  same  power, 
whatever  it  may  be,  shall  also  be  able  to  continue  the  exist- 
ence which  it  has  given  ?  I  am  lost  in  the  wonder  that  I 
exist.  It  is  no  more  wonderful  to  me  that  I  may  continue  to 
exist. 

I  saw  an  article  only  a  day  or  two  ago  in  a  prominent 
paper,  saying,  that  the  theory  of  evolution  is  atheistic.  Evo- 
lution does  not  undertake  to  explain  the  ultimate  origin  of 
anything.  It  simply  discusses  the  question  how.  The  the- 
ory of  evolution  is  neither  theistic  nor  atheistic.  It  does  not 
touch  that  question.  It  leaves  it  just  where  it  was  before,  to 
be  settled  on  other  grounds. 

Another  question  is  as  to  whether  this  theory  is  consistent 
with  devoutness,  with  piety,  with  religion,  that  which  men 
treasure  in  their  minds  concerning  the  great  mystery  of 
life  and  death  and  eternity.  It  seems  to  me  so  strange  that 
men  should  raise  questions  like  these.  Religion  is  a  fact. 
It  has  been  developed  in  every  age,  under  all  circumstances, 
in  every  clime.  It  has  proved  itself  to  be  an  essential  part 
of  human  nature.  Is  a  theory  of  the  universe  going  to 
change  us  so  completely  as  all^  that  1 

Consider  one  more  point.  Men  seem  to  think  that  they 
do  God  honor  by  clinging  to  a  theory  as  to  how  he  produced 
certain  results.  I  feel  that  I  do  God  greater  honor  by 
humbly  looking  after  the  facts,  by  not  presumptuously  say- 
ing, "  O  God,  it  cannot  be  that  thou  didst  so  and  so :  this 
other  must  have  been  thy  way  of  working."  I  feel  that  I 
honor  God  most  by  humbly  and  reverently  finding  out  his 


Origin  of  Man.  33 

ways,  accepting  and  rejoicing  in  them,  and  remembering  this 
one  thing,  that  nothing  can  be  piously  true,  nothing  can  be 
religiously  true,  which  is  scientifically  false.  This  universe, 
if  it  be  the  work  of  one  will,  one  life  at  its  heart,  must  be 
like  a  web  with  one  pattern  running  through  it  all.  It  is  one 
law,  one  element,  one  God ;  and  we  cannot  be  religious  while 
we  cling  to  false  traditional  human  conceptions  as  to  how 
God  did  this  and  that,  and  refuse  to  accept  the  truth  of  his 
own  testimony  as  revealed  in  the  work  of  his  own  hands. 

When  will  the  world  learn  this  lesson  ?  Time  and  time 
again  through  the  history  of  the  Church,  during  the  last  two 
hundred  years,  this  writer,  that  writer,  and  another,  have 
been  put  on  the  "Index"  and  excommunicated  for  teaching 
just  such  truths ;  for  truths  they  have  proved  to  be.  Yes, 
the  Church,  time  after  time,  has  flung  its  defiance  in  the  face 
of  God,  and  condemned  those  who  have  uttered  his  own 
eternal  truths.  Let  them  beware  lest  by  repeating  again 
that  old,  age-long  tragedy  and  farce,  lest  by  putting  Darwin 
and  Spencer  in  the  "  Index  Expurgatorium,"  and  excommuni- 
cating them,  they  find,  as  so  often  before,  that  it  is  God  him- 
self they  have  put  in  the  "  Index,"  that  it  is  God  himself  they 
have  attempted  to  cast  out  of  the  temple  in  which  they  claim 
to  worship  him. 


Sin  and  Salvation. 


Sin  and  Salvation, —  these  two  words  suggest  the  thought 
of  a  law  broken,  of  a  penalty  following  the  transgression  of 
that  law,  and  of  some  deliverance,  either  from  the  transgres- 
sion itself,  from  the  penalty  of  that  transgression,  or  from 
both. 

And  these  idea  —  law,  transgression,  penalty,  deliverance, 
in  some  one  of  their  thousand  kaleidoscopic  forms  —  will  be 
found  at  the  heart  of  every  religion,  of  every  philosophy  in 
all  the  world.  It  is  the  problem  which  faced  primeval  man. 
It  is  the  problem  which  has  been  studied  all  the  way  up  the 
ages.  It  is  the  problem  which  faces  us  to-day.  It  is  the 
problem  which  will  continue  to  face  us  until  that  ideal  condi- 
tion, which  we  call  the  kingdom  of  God,  shall  have  come  in 
its  perfection  on  earth. 

If  we  take  our  stand  by  the  side  of  the  lowest  barbarian, 
and  see  him  afraid  of  or  trying  to  conciliate  his  fetich ;  if  we 
see  him  laying  food  as  an  offering  on  the  grave  of  some 
old  chief  or  ancestor  and  praying,  "  Here  we  bring  thee 
food :  be  good  to  us,  and  help  us  "  ;  if  we  take  our  stand  in 
that  ancient  civilization  of  Mexico,  and  see  thousands  of 
human  beings  slain  by  the  priests  as  an  offering  to  their 
cruel  gods  ;  if  we  see  the  mother  casting  her  child  into  the 
sacred  Ganges ;  if  we  see  the  follower  of  Doorga,  in  India, 
committing  a  hideous  murder,  under  the  supposition  that 
he  is  thereby  winning  favor  with  ^he  cruel  goddess;  if  we 


Sin  and  Salvation.  35 

stand  in  that  awful  vale  of  Gehenna,  outside  of  the  sacred 
city,  and  hear  the  drums  beat  to  drown  the  cries  of  the 
innocent  children  burned  in  the  arms  of  the  red-hot  idol, 
Moloch  ;  if  we  go  up  the  holy  hill  and  stand  in  the  tem- 
ple, and  hear  the  hymns  and  prayers  ascend,  and  see  the 
countless  victims  slaughtered  in  the  attempt  to  appease  an 
offended  deity  or  to  wash  away  the  sins  of  his  worshippers ; 
if  we  stand  with  Jesus  himself,  as  he  talks  with  the  Samari- 
tan woman,  and  hear  him  outlining  the  conditions  of  deliv- 
erance from  human  evil,  and  reconciliation  with  that  God 
who  is  an  infinite  and  omnipresent  spirit;  if  we  come 
down  the  ages,  and  see  the  crowds  kneeling  in  cathedrals, 
or  pilgrims  toiling  on  their  way  to  far-off,  sacred  shrines ; 
if  we  sit  beside  the  Quaker  in  his  silent  worship,  waiting, 
as  he  does,  for  the  moving  of  the  spirit ;  if  we  stand  in  the 
presence  of  gorgeous  rituals  and  ceremonies  ;  if  we  come 
to  our  own  simple  and  severe  form  of  worship,  and  study 
of  these  serious  themes  :  in  all  these  cases,  we  are  look- 
ing upon  this  wonderful  phenomenon, —  man  in  his  different 
stages  of  development,  in  different  conditions,  attempting 
to  solve  this  one  problem  of  sin,  suffering,  salvation. 

The  same  truth  meets  us,  if  we  look  over  the  various  at- 
tempts of  the  world  to  outline  a  perfect  philosophy  of  things, 
from  the  first  crude  efforts  in  the  dim  distance  of  prehistoric 
time.  If  we  look  at  the  result  of  the  work  of  Aristotle,  if 
we  read  Plato,  if  we  come  down  the  ages  to  Spinoza,  and 
then  on  to  our  own  time,  and  open  the  last  volume  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  again  we  find  this  same  wondrous  thing  going  on, 
—  man  attempting  to  solve  these  old,  age-long  problems  of 
the  world. 

These,  again,  are  the  problems  that  have  inspired  the 
mightiest  and  sublimest  flights  of  the  world's  poesy.  It 
was  the  problem  that  Job  dealt  with  in  one  of  the  grandest 


36  Beliefs  about  Man. 

poems  of  ancient  times.  Some  phase  or  form  of  this  prob- 
lem engaged  the  thought  of  blind  old  Homer.  It  was  this 
thought  that  pursued  and  led  on  Dante,  in  his  pilgrimage 
through  the  various  rounds  and  circles  of  the  Inferno^  as  he 
climbed  the  mountains  of  the  Furgatorio^  as  he  stood  wrapped 
in  the  beatific  vision  of  the  Faradiso.  This  was  the  prob- 
lem that  Milton  had  in  mind,  when,  as  he  says,  he  attempts 
to  rise  "  to  the  height  of  this  great  argument,"  that  he  may 
*'  assert  eternal  Providence,  and  justify  the  ways  of  God  to 
men." 

This  is  the  problem  of  Faust.  And  the  multitudinous 
minor  singers  of  the  world,  like  the  forest  songsters  in  the 
morning,  that  wake  and  answer  the  first  sweet  cry,  all  give 
utterance  to  the  wail  of  the  world's  sorrow  or  the  paean  of 
the  world's  great  hope. 

This  problem,  then,  of  sin  and  salvation,  which  the  world 
has  been  working  at  these  thousands  of  years,  shall  we  dare 
to  think  that  we  can  solve  it  this  morning,  in  an  hour  ?  Only 
one  thing  encourages  us  to  attempt  so  mighty  a  theme.  A 
little  child  on  his  father's  shoulder  may  be  able  to  see  further 
than  the  one  who  lifts  him  up.  A  dwarf  on  a  mountain-top 
may  be  able  to  gain  glimpses  and  outlooks  that  are  utterly 
hidden  from  the  tallest  giant  in  the  valley.  Balboa  discov- 
ered the  Pacific,  not  because  he  was  mightier  and  grander 
than  thousands  of  his  fellow-men,  but  because  he  was  the  first 
who,  in  his  wanderings,  climbed  to  that  mountain  peak  in 
Darien,  and  from  there  saw  spread  out  before  him  that  mar- 
vellous new  world.  And  so,  not  because  we  are  wiser,  but 
because  we  are  able  to  climb  to  the  high  peaks  of  outlook 
of  philosophy,  of  science,  that  the  world's  struggle  and  toil 
have  heaped  up  century  after  century,  we,  though  small  in 
our  intellectual  stature,  may  be  able  to  gain  glimpses  of  the 
solution  of   some  of   these   problems   that   the   wisest   and 


Sin  and  Salvation.  37 

greatest  of  the  past  sought  for  in  vain.  Let  us  then  put  the 
problem  simply  and  clearly  before  us. 

Men  suffer.  Why  1  Men  are  burdened  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  sin  which  they  seek  to  throw  off,  that  they  may  be 
free.  Why  ?  What  is  the  explanation  of  these  strange,  mys- 
terious facts  .-* 

I  want  to  ask  you  to  follow  me  while,  as  briefly  as  possible, 
I  show  you  how  men  have  looked  at  this  question,  and  how 
natural  it  is  that  they  should  look  at  it  as  they  have.  I  will 
give  you  a  principle  which  you  can  apply  to  all  the  religions 
and  all  the  philosophies  of  the  world. 

If  we  stand  by  the  side  of  the  lowest  barbaric  man,  trying 
to  feel  with  his  feelings  and  to  look  out  over  the  universe 
through  his  eyes,  we  shall  be  able  to  understand  perhaps 
why  he  gave  the  answer,  that  we  know  he  did,  to  the  first 
problem  of  the  world.  He  knew  nothing  of  any  power  in 
this  universe  except  such  as  he  imagined  in  the  likeness  of 
himself.  He  therefore  peopled  the  world  with  ten  thousand 
invisible  forms,  gods  of  the  clouds,  of  the  stars,  of  the  sun, 
of  the  moon,  of  the  rivers,  of  the  trees,  of  the  mountains. 
And  these  gods  were  to  him  either  good  or  evil,  according  as 
they  helped  or  hurt.  And  so  the  sun  as  the  source  of  life, 
the  sun  as  the  giver  of  light,  the  sun  as  the  glad  bringer  of 
day,  was  a  good  being.  When  it  scorched  the  deserts,  when  it 
dried  up  the  earth,  when  it  brought  pestilence  on  its  beams, 
then  it  was  an  evil  power.  So,  too,  he  feared  the  lightning  as 
an  evil  thing.  He  trembled  before  the  cold,  before  hunger 
and  disease,  and  the  ten  thousand  forces  about  him  that 
seemed  inimical  to  his  welfare  and  happiness.  He  inter- 
preted all  that  he  called  evil  in  his  life  by  referring  it  to  some 
one  of  these  invisible,  mighty,  malignant  powers  that,  in  some 
way,  he  had  offended.  The  problem  with  him  was,  How 
shall  I  be  able  to  gain  the  good-will  of  this  power?     You 


38  Beliefs  about  Man. 

will  see  that  this  is  the  principle  that  runs  through  all  the 
religions  of  the  world,  and  explains  them  all.  They  are 
man's  theories  of  the  universe  and  of  the  powers  that  govern 
it,  and  his  attempts  to  come  into  right  relations  with  these 
powers,  so  that  they  may  be  friends,  and  not  enemies ;  so  that 
they  may  help,  and  not  injure  him. 

And  precisely  this  problem,  only  with  such  a  change  as  our 
change  of  thought  necessitates,  is  the  one  that  we  have  to 
solve.  What  is  the  effort  of  modern  science  except  an  at- 
tempt to  find  out  the  nature  of  the  forces  that  encompass  us, 
and  to  bring  ourselves  into  such  relations  with  them  that  they 
shall  help  instead  of  hurt  ?  The  principle  remains  the  same, 
and  must  remain  the  same  forever.  It  is  only  a  difference  of 
interpretation,  determined  by  the  intelligence  of  man.  When 
man  had  grown  so  as  to  conceive  the  grand  principle  of 
monotheism  ;  when  he  had  come  to  think  that  instead  of 
there  being  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  different  gods,  some 
good,  some  bad,  some  indifferent,  there  was  only  one,  and 
that  one  their  God,  their  Father,  their  Friend,  an  Almighty 
Being, —  when  this  conception  had  taken  possession  of  man's 
mind,  you  will  very  easily  see  it  necessitated  a  grand  change 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  problems  of  sin,  suffering,  and 
salvation.  Men  would  reason  of  necessity  like  this  :  "  Why 
should  we  sin  against  and  disregard  the  will  of  a  loving, 
good,  and  perfectly  wise  God,  one  who  knows  always  what  is 
best  ?  On  the  other  hand,  why  should  a  loving  God  and 
Father  and  Friend,  an  Almighty  Being,  make  us  suffer? 
Why  should  he  torture  us  t  Why  should  he  lay  burdens  of 
sin  and  suffering  upon  us,  that  crush  out  the  life,  that  kill 
hope,  that  lead  to  despair,  that  make  us  wish  for  death  ?  " 

You  will  see  that  the  moral  nature  of  man,  developed  to 
this  stage  of  perfection,  would  demand  that  he  must  find 
some   cause  outside  of   this  perfect  God,  if   possible.     He 


Sin  and  Salvation.  39 

would  say  a  perfect  God  must  have  made  things  perfect  at 
the  first ;  so  it  was  inevitable  that  there  should  grow  up  a 
dream  of  a  primeval  Eden.  Man,  they  said,  must  have 
started  in  a  Paradise ;  and  it  cannot  be  God's  fault  that  he 
did  not  remain  there.  He  must  voluntarily  have  committed 
some  offence  against  the  Most  High  that  produced  this  con- 
dition of  sorrow  and  evil. 

Out  of  this  kind  of  reasoning  sprang  the  doctrine  of  the 
fall.  The  fall  of  man,  so  long  as  it  was  accepted,  seemed 
to  promise  a  solution  of  all  these  great  problems  that  had 
weighed  upon  men's  hearts.  But  let  us  now  briefly  state  two 
or  three  reasons  why  to-day  it  is  simply  impossible  to  accept 
any  such  solution. 

In  the  first  place,  suppose  there  was  a  fall,  who  would  be 
responsible  for  it  ?  Not  Adam  certainly.  No  argument,  no 
train  of  reasoning,  can  by  any  possibility  shift  the  responsi- 
bility from  —  let  me  say  it  reverently — God  himself.  Did 
He  not  make  Adam?  Did  He  not  place  him  in  circum- 
stances where  He  knew  he  would  fall  ?  And  all  the  time  He 
might  have  made  it  otherwise.  He  might  have  circumstanced 
him  so  that  he  would  not  have  fallen  and  would  not  have 
sinned.  The  responsibility  must  come  back  to  God  himself. 
This  doctrine,  in  its  implications,  is  not  only  irrational,  but 
utterly  immoral.  For  one  of  its  darkest  aspects  lies  just  here  : 
that  it  throws  the  burden,  not  only  of  the  curse  of  sorrow 
and  of  death,  but  of  sin  itself,  upon  the  innocent ;  if  I  may 
be  pardoned  such  a  contradiction  in  terms,  in  order  to  state 
that  which  is  true  in  thought.  Take,  for  example,  the  case  of 
the  unborn  child.  He  does  not  ask  to  be  born.  He  comes 
into  a  world  already  blighted,  thrust  here  by  the  power  that 
created  the  universe,  born  of  a  parentage  already  depraved 
and  corrupted,  born  the  inheritor  of  disease,  possibly  of 
idiocy  or  insanity,  with  a  tendency  to  crime  so  strong  that  no 


40  Beliefs  about  Man, 

power  of  human  effort  or  human  surroundings  shall  be  able 
to  stem  the  current  and  ward  off  the  terrible  result.  The 
innocent,  on  this  theory,  suffer  for  the  guilty,  and  suffer  per- 
chance more  than  the  guilty  themselves.  And  this  theory, 
according  to  the  common  conception,  is  darkened  by  pro- 
longing the  result  of  the  fall  even  to  infinity ;  so  that  un- 
born millions,  for  the  sin  of  one,  are  doomed  to  cross  this 
earth  amid  tears  and  sorrows  and  wrongs  innumerable,  living 
a  life  of  torture  only  as  a  prelude  to  an  eternity  unspeakably 
worse. 

Another  point,  which  of  itself  would  be  sufficient  to  set 
the  matter  aside  as  the  solution  of  our  problem,  is  that  it  has 
been  discovered,  beyond  a  question,  that  no  such  thing  as 
a  fall  of  man  has  ever  taken  place.  It  is  a  tradition,  a 
legend,  a  myth,  unhistoric,  without  one  particle  of  basis  in 
fact.  Instead  of  man's  having  been  in  a  higher  position  and 
having  fallen  from  that  to  where  he  is  to-day,  we  are  rather 
to  think  of  him  as  originally  lower  than  the  lowest  type  of 
man  with  which  we  are  acquainted,  and  through  uncounted 
ages,  and  by  slow  accretions  of  moral  power  and  intelligence, 
climbing  gradually  up  to  his  present  position,  where  he  looks 
upward  to  something  as  yet  only  to  be  dreamed.  We  cannot 
accept,  then,  the  fall  of  man  as  a  solution  of  this  problem  of 
suffering  and  sin. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  put  aside  all  these  theological  and 
traditional  conceptions,  and  try  to  look  the  matter  simply  in 
the  face  from  the  scientific  stand-point  of  to-day,  and  see  if 
we  can  suggest  a  possible  solution. 

And  first  as  to  the  problem  of  suffering.  I,  for  one,  cannot 
conceive  the  possibility  of  a  being  so  constructed  as  to  be 
able  to  feel  the  sensation  of  pleasure  and  yet  not  liable  to 
feel  the  sensation  of  pain.  The  very  possibility  of  feeling 
joy  or  ecstasy   or   hope   or   love   of   necessity   implies  the 


Sin  and  Salvation.  41 

possibility  of  feeling  their  opposites.  I  cannot  even  under- 
stand how  we  should  have  a  conception  of  joy,  were  there  not 
a  background  of  sorrow  as  a  contrast  to  help  us  to  a  defini- 
tion. If,  for  example,  I  had  always  been  perfectly  happy  all 
my  life,  and  had  never  seen  anything  but  perfect  happiness, 
I  should  not  even  know  that  I  was  happy.  I  should  have  no 
materials  out  of  which  to  construct  a  definition  of  pleasure  or 
of  pain.     Contrast  is  essential  to  consciousness. 

Once  more.  I  believe  that  pain,  all  that  pain  which  is 
necessary  in  the  world,  is  a  good,  and  not  an  evil.  I  shall 
not  enter  into  a  discussion  of  the  problem  whether  God  might 
have  created  us  differently,  or  whether  we  might  have  been 
developed  differently  here.  But,  taking  us  as  we  are,  it  seems 
to  me  perfectly  clear  that  a  little  thought  is  able  to  show  that 
pain  is  a  good  and  not  an  evil.  Every  individual  existence 
in  the  world  is  surrounded  by  conditions  that  we  call  laws, 
which  constitute  this  individuality.  If  I  had  a  blackboard 
here  and  should  draw  a  circle,  and  then  break  it  at  any  one 
point,  the  circle  would  be  destroyed.  I  have  broken  the  law 
of  the  circle,  and  the  circle  is  no  more.  You  cannot  have  a 
river  without  a  bed  and  banks  and  water, —  the  water  flowing 
over  the  bed  between  the  shores.  Break  these  conditions 
anywhere,  and  the  river  is  destroyed.  So  with  ourselves. 
We  are  surrounded  by  certain  conditions,  certain  laws  which 
constitute  us  what  we  are,  individual  men  and  women.  Now 
it  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  that  God  himself  cannot  help, 
to  say  that  I  can  break  the  law  of  physical  health,  and  still  be 
healthy.  If  I  break  a  law  of  physical  health,  the  result  must 
follow.  If  I  break  a  law  of  mental  sanity,  I  must  become 
insane  ;  and  Omnipotence,  even,  cannot  ward  off  the  result 

Now,  then,  think  of  this  :  that  pain  is  simply  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  the  index  of  a  broken  law,  whether  of  the 
body  or  of  the  mind.     In  society,  anywhere,  it  means  that 


42  Beliefs  about  Man. 

the  conditions  of  righteousness,  the  conditions  of  health,  the 
conditions  of  well-being,  the  conditions  of  happiness,  have 
been  transgressed.  There  is  no  pain  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  that  does  not  find  right  there  its  explanation.  Now 
suppose  that  we  could  break  the  conditions  of  life  and  still 
have  no  suffering.  Take  the  case  of  a  little  child.  Sup- 
pose it  did  not  hurt  the  child  to  cut  itself  with  a  knife,  or 
to  burn  itself  in  the  fire,  or  to  eat  that  which  is  injurious, 
would  there  be  one  child  in  ten  millions  that  would  grow  up 
physically  unmutilated  ?  How  many  of  them  would  grow  up 
at  all  ?  Pain  is  simply  a  signal,  a  warning,  set  up  on  the 
limits  of  the  laws  of  our  individuality,  telling  us  to  overstep 
those  laws  at  our  peril.  And,  if  it  be  true,  as  we  know  it  is, 
that  so  many  men  are  habitually  breaking  the  laws  of  health, 
breaking  the  mental  and  moral  conditions  of  right  living  in 
spite  of  the  penalty  and  the  suffering,  how  many,  think  you, 
would  keep  those  laws,  if  the  penalty  and  the  suffering  could 
be  abolished  ?  We  shall  be  able  to  abolish  pain  just  as  fast 
and  as  far  as  we  learn  the  conditions  of  right  living.  But, 
until  we  do  learn  those  conditions,  and  obey  them,  pain  will 
exist ;  and  its  scorpion  whip  will  lash  us  into  the  right  way, 
driving  us  on  toward  better  and  nobler  conditions  of  life 
Pain,  then,  I  believe,  is  not  an  evil.  It  is  a  signal,  a  benefi- 
cent guide,  telling  us  the  way  of  life,  and  warning  us  not  to 
depart  from  it. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  question  of  sin.  The  consciousness 
of  sin,  they  tell  us,  is  a  sign  that  we  have  offended  God, 
that  he  is  angry  with  us.  It  is  the  foreshadowing  of  punish- 
ment. It  is  an  indication  of  the  fall.  But,  instead  of  telling 
us  that  we  are  lower  than  we  once  were,  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  fact  that  man  has  a  consciousness  of  sin  is  the  grandest 
element  of  all  his  grand  humanity.  It  is  that  in  which  I 
read  the  noblest  and  most  wonderful  lesson  of  hope  j  for 


Sin  and  Salvation.  43 

what  does  it  mean  ?  Did  you  ever  see  an  animal  conscious 
of  sin  ?  Do  dogs  and  horses  meditate  over  their  past  life, 
and  say:  "I  did  so  and  so,  and  the  result  of  it  was  evil.  I 
regret  that  I  did  it,  I  must  now  pursue  a  nobler  course  ? " 
Do  they  look  forward  and  say,  "  We  must  create  around  us 
conditions  favorable  to  nobler  life,  we  must  be  better  dogs 
and  better  horses "  ?  Do  they  look  up  and  on,  and  see 
heights  of  attainment  that  lure  them  to  something  grander, 
in  the  way  of  the  development  of  their  nature,  than  they 
have  yet  attained  ?  If  such  a  thing  were  possible,  would  we 
not  say  at  once,  Here  is  the  germ  of  something  unspeakably 
wonderful,  and  these  creatures  beneath  us  are  manifest- 
ing the  possibility  of  incalculable  development  ?  When  man 
stands  half-way  up  a  height,  on  the  brink  of  an  abyss,  look- 
ing down  and  saying,  "I  came  from  there :  there  is  even 
now  danger  that  I  may  slip,  and  fall  back  to  that  condition  " ; 
and  he  shrinks  from  the  edge  of  that  abyss  with  horror,  and 
looks  up  and  sees  peak  after  peak,  mountain  height  after 
mountain  height,  each  one  overtopping  the  last,  until  they 
fade  away  into  the  infinite  blue,  and  feels  an  aspiration 
toward  those  heights,  an  impulse  to  climb,  and  says,  "  There 
is  my  destiny,  and  no  one  knows  how  far  it  reaches  beyond 
what  any  one  can  see  " :  do  you  not  feel  that,  when  man  can 
say  this,  he  thus  declares  himself  capable  of  advancement,  of 
infinite  progression  ?  If  you  could  conceive  a  race  of  men 
stationary,  men  who  had  never  been  any  worse  than  they  are 
now,  men  who  never  by  any  possibility  could  be  better  than 
they  are  now,  you  would  never  find  them  troubled  by  any 
sense  of  sin.  It  is  only  the  man  who  is  capable  of  being 
something  more,  wiio  sees  an  ideal,  and  is  inspired  by  it  to 
pursue  it,  who  talks  of  sin.  And  this,  friends,  will  explain 
what  I  have  many  times  heard  spoken  of  as  a  curious  prob- 
lem in  moral  psycholog)', —  that  the  best  people  are  just  the 


44  Beliefs  about  Man. 

ones  that  are  weighed  down  with  the  heaviest  consciousness 
of  sin. 

It  explains  Paul,  noble,  heroic,  grand  soul  as  he  was,  when 
he  says,  "I  am  the  very  chief  of  sinners."  Why?  You  see 
a  little  boy  sitting  down  with  his  pencil  and  slate,  and  mak- 
ing the  image  of  some  animal  or  drawing  a  tree,  in  such  a 
fashion  that  the  name  of  the  object  has  to  be  written  under 
it,  so  as  to  show  what  it  means.  If  you  find  him  contented 
with  his  work,  you  do  not  feel  that  the  germ  of  an  artist  is 
there.  And  so  it  is  consistent  with  the  grandest  attainment 
of  artistic  genius  to  find  a  man  a  master  in  the  world  of  art, 
and  still  dominated  by  an  ideal  so  far  beyond  his  highest 
achievement  that  he  feels  as  though  all  he  had  done  were 
nothing ;  and  he  says  :  "  Artistically,  I  have  not  attained.  I 
only  look  forward,  I  dream,  I  hope."  This  was  what  Newton 
meant,  when  he  spoke  of  himself  as  a  little  child  gathering 
pebbles  on  the  seashore,  while  the  infinite  ocean  of  truth 
lay  unexplored,  stretched  out  before  him. 

The  consciousness  of  sin,  then,  means  that  we  are  all  chil- 
dren of  the  Infinite,  that  we  are  capable  of  treading  our  yes- 
terdays underneath  our  feet,  that  we  are  capable  of  making 
our  very  sins  stairways  for  climbing :  it  means  an  infinite  out- 
look, a  hope  for  an  eternal  future. 

Now,  then,  in  accordance  with  the  thought  I  have  already 
given  you,  let  me  outline  my  conception  of  salvation.  We 
have  talked  of  sin  and  suffering.  What  do  we  mean  when 
we  speak  of  salvation  ?  You  will  readily  understand  that 
I  do  not  believe  we  need  to  be  saved  from  any  wrath  of 
God.  That  expression  we  may  still  use,  if  we  please,  as  a 
figurative,  poetic  expression,  just  as  we  speak  of  an  angry 
sunset  or  a  threatening  aspect  of  the  sky.  It  has  no  other 
meaning.  God  is  not  angry  with  us;  He  is  not  out  of 
patience ;  He  is  not  out  of  temper  with  us  in  the  least.     If 


Sin  and  Salvation.  45 

He  is,  only  Himself  is  to  blame,  for  who  made  the  universe 
and  started  it  on  its  career  ?  Nor  do  we  want  to  be  saved 
from  the  devil.  What  is  he  ?  Simply,  man's  poetic  personifi- 
cation of  the  adverse  forces  of  his  life.  Satan  is  man's 
adversary.  The  devil  everywhere  has  been  thus  named. 
That  is,  he  has  been  the  figurative  embodiment  of  the  differ- 
ent obstacles  man  meets  and  has  to  overcome  in  the  path- 
way of  his  progress.  We  do  not  need  to  be  saved  from  hell. 
There  is  no  hell,  save  that  very  real  one  of  sin,  of  sorrow,  of 
suffering,  of  wrong,  of  corruption,  out  of  which  we  are  all 
attempting  to  struggle,  day  by  day,  and  out  of  which  we  are 
trying  to  lift  the  world. 

We  do  not  need  to  be  saved  from  any  fall,  for  there  has 
been  no  fall.  What,  then,  do  we  mean  by  the  word  "salva- 
tion"? And  here  let  me  say,  if  I  use  any  of  these  words 
again,  I  use  them  with  a  figurative  meaning  only.  I  believe 
that  all  the  terms  that  have  been  developed  in  the  history 
of  these  old  schemes  of  the  universe  and  of  man  ought  to 
be,  as  far  as  possible,  discarded  from  our  living  thought. 

As  there  has  been  no  fall,  so  there  is  no  need  of  any  atone- 
ment in  the  theologic  sense.  There  is  no  need  of  any  deliv- 
erance from  the  fall  in  the  theologic  sense.  There  is  no 
need  of  any  incarnation  in  the  theologic  sense.  There  is  no 
need  of  any  substituted  suffering  in  the  theologic  sense.  I 
believe  that  the  words  "  Saviour,"  "  salvation,"  "  Messiah,"  all 
these  terms  that  belong  to  these  Oriental  forms  of  thought, 
ought  to  be  displaced  by  those  that  thrill  and  are  alive  with 
the  real  thought  of  to-day.  There  is  no  need  any  longer  for 
these  terms.  And  I  believe  that  no  one  man,  no  one  being, 
in  all  history,  has  a  right  to  the  exclusive  name  of  Saviour. 
With  all  reverence  for  God  and  for  whatever  he  has  made 
sacred  in  the  history  of  the  past,  I  must  dare  to  differ  from 
the  apostle  when  he  says,  "  There  is  none  other  name  under 


46  Beliefs  about  Man. 

heaven  given  among  men  whereby  we  must  be  saved."  I 
believe  there  are  a  thousand  names.  Every  man  who  has 
lived  out  a  grand  ideal,  who  has  uttered  a  grand  thought, 
who  has  done  a  grand  deed,  who  has  become  an  inspiration 
to  thought,  an  impulse  to  the  moral  life  of  his  age,  all  these 
in  their  spheres,  and  to  the  extent  of  what  they  have  done, 
are  the  world's  saviours.  These  are  the  forces  that  lift 
humanity  and  push  onward  the  car  of  its  progress. 

The  word  "  salvation  "  then  will  be  changed,  and  in  its  place 
there  will  come  in  the  word  "education,"  —  not  education  in 
the  narrow  sense  of  what  we  get  in  the  schools,  but  education 
in  that  broad  sense  which  defines  it  as  being  a  leading  out, 
a  development  of  all  the  possibilities  and  capabilities  of 
our  being;  and  which  deals  with  our  surroundings,  bring- 
ing us  into  right  relations  with  them. 

We  are  saved  then,  physically,  when  we  have  learned  to 
keep  the  laws  of  our  body,  and  are  well  ;  mentally,  when  we 
have  learned  the  laws  of  thought,  when  we  have  learned  to 
weigh  evidence  and  look  over  the  world  calmly  in  search  of 
truth.  We  are  saved  morally,  when  we  have  learned  and  are 
guided  by  the  laws  of  man's  mind  and  body,  when  we  have 
learned  to  stand  in  right  relations  to  our  fellow-men  and  the 
universe  about  us.  There  is  no  salvation,  there  is  no  concep- 
tion of  salvation,  higher,  grander,  better  than  that ;  for  what 
can  there  be  better  or  finer  than  a  complete  man  t 

Whoever  is  saved  in  this  sense  is  saved  forever.  We 
believe  in  one  God,  one  law  everywhere.  If,  then,  I  am  right 
in  my  relations  here,  and  trained  in  all  my  capacities,  fitted 
to  dwell  in  whatever  surroundings  I  am  placed,  then  I  am 
ready  for  any  world,  for  any  sphere  where  the  providence  of 
Cod  may  place  me. 

By  what  means,  then,  shall  this  salvation  be  wrought  ?  Not 
by  belief  in  any  atonement;  not  by  prayer  simply;  not  by 
forgiveness.     Do  you  know,  friends,  we  are  often  deluded  by 


Sin  and  Salvation.  47 

that  word  "forgiveness"?  God  himself  cannot  forgive  you, 
in  the  sense  of  blotting  out  the  natural  and  necessary  results 
of  your  deeds.  These  you  must  suffer,  as  a  grand  tree  with 
a  limb  lopped  off  or  its  trunk  wounded  by  the  blow  of  an 
axe,  can  only  outgrow  its  wounds,  developing  strength  in 
spite  of  them,  leaving  them  behind  as  an  incident  of  the 
past.  We  are  to  be  saved  through  knowledge,  through  a 
development  of  self-control,  through  the  subduing  of  our 
passions,  those  forces  that  would  lead  us  astray.  We  are  to 
be  saved  by  following  motives  which,  when  fairly  under- 
stood, will  lead  us  all  to  choose  the  way  of  wisdom,  which 
is  the  way  of  pleasantness  and  the  path  of  peace. 

And  then  mental  rest,  the  sense  of  deliverance  from  sin, 
how  shall  we  attain  that  ?  We  shall  attain  it  when  we  have 
come  into  such  accord  with  God  and  with  the  universe,  with 
the  conditions  of  our  life,  as  no  longer  to  bear  them  simply 
as  a  burden,  but  to  rejoice  in  them  as  the  conditions  of  a 
possible  noble  life.  When  we  see  these  conditions  all  around 
us,  and  accept  them  heartily ;  when  we  learn  to  place  the 
forces  of  this  universe  beneath  us  as  help  and  inspiration, 
thus  feeling  ourselves  one  with  the  great  Power  that  guides 
and  moves  the  world, —  we  shall  rest  in  peace,  not  as  having 
attained,  but  as  doing  the  best  we  can  to-day,  and  reaching 
on  toward  something  higher' and  better  to-morrow. 

Let  us,  then,  be  reconciled  to  these  necessary  conditions 
of  our  life.  To  fight  against  them  is  as  if  an  eagle  should 
wish  to  abolish  the  air,  when  all  the  time  these  currents,  with 
which  now  and  then  he  has  to  struggle,  are  the  resisting 
medium  which  becomes  the  lever  for  his  mighty  wings,  that 
lift  him  in  his  flight  as  he  soars  in  the  face  of  the  sun.  So, 
by  reconciling  ourselves  to  these  conditions  of  life  that  we 
think  burdensome,  by  accepting  them,  living  nobly  in  rela- 
tion to  them,  they  shall  become  the  very  conditions  of  peace 
and  of  endless  advance. 


4S  Beliefs  about  Man. 

Peace, — it  is  not  stagnation. 
Nor  simple,  aimless  rest : 

'Tis  tireless  movement  onward, 
Impelled  by  some  high  quest. 

Peace, —  'tis  an  eagle  sweeping 
Far  o'er  some  mountain  height, 

Who  turns  the  air's  resistance 
To  motion  and  delight. 

Peace, —  'tis  a  mighty  steamship. 
Steel-ribbed,  with  heart  of  fire. 

Which  laughs  the  storm  to  rainbows, 
Too  strong  to  stay  or  tire. 

Peace, —  'tis  a  brooklet  running 
From  overflowing  springs. 

Which  purer  grows  by  running. 
And  still,  while  running,  sings. 


IS  MAN  FREE? 


In  the  second  book  of  his  Paradise  Lost,  Milton  pict- 
ures for  us  a  conference  of  the  infernal  powers.  They  have 
heard  that  a  new  world,  and  a  new  being  called  man,  have 
been  somewhere  created ;  and  they  are  trying  to  fix  upon  one 
of  their  number  to  go  and  seek  out  this  new  work  of  God 
recently  become  their  enemy.  And  after  Satan,  their  prince, 
has  volunteered  to  undertake  this  difficult  task,  and  has  left 
them  to  carry  it  into  execution,  the  poet  pictures  those  that 
remain  behind  as  dispersing  this  way  and  that  to  occupy  their 
thought  and  time  until  his  return.  Some  of  them  engage  in 
games,  after  the  fashion  of  the  old  Olympic ;  some  of  them 
practise  at  the  tournament,  as  it  came  to  be  called  in  later 
years;  some  of  them  start  on  a  voyage  of  exploration  to 
find  out  what  sort  of  a  place  this  hell  is  which  is  henceforth 
to  be  their  home.     And  then  the  poet  says  :  — 

"  Others  apart  sat  on  a  hill  retired, 

In  thoughts  more  elevate,  and  reason'd  high 
Of  providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate, 
Fix'd  fate,  free-will,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end,  in  wand'ring  mazes  lost." 

I  take  it  that  we  are  to  regard  this  abyss,  and  this  con- 
fusion of  thought,  and  this  discussion  of  fate,  free-will,  and 
foreknowledge  as  representing  the  abysses  of  the  poet's 
own  imagination,  and  as  setting  forth  his  conception  of  the 

*  See  note  at  end  of  volume,  page  129. 


50  Beliefs  about  Man. 

condition  in  which  these  great  philosophical  themes  stood  in 
his  day.  Not  only  have  these  infernal  powers,  as  depicted  in 
the  poet's  imagination,  discussed  these  great  questions ;  but 
you  are  aware  that  they  have  been  themes  for  the  theologian, 
for  the  philosopher,  for  the  scientist,  in  all  ages.  I  do  not 
undertake  the  hopeless  task  of  settling  that  which  the  world 
still  continues  to  hold  in  debate.  Only  must  I  give  you,  as 
clearly  as  I  can,  some  reasons  for  holding  what  seems  to  me 
to  be  the  true  theory  concerning  this  question  of  the  free- 
dom of  man. 

There  have  been  four  great  types  of  thought  concerning  it. 
Three  of  them  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  at  any  length, 
except  as  that  discussion  may  be  incidental  to  my  treatment 
of  the  fourth.  Yet  I  must  at  least  name  and  outline  them  as 
I  pass  them  by. 

There  have  been  men  who  have  believed  in  what  they  have 
called  fate.  There  have  been  those  who  believed  that  they 
themselves  were  "men  of  destiny,"  led,  guided,  or  impelled  by 
some  invisible,  undefinable  force  that  created  their  careers, 
and  determined  before  they  were  born  that  they  should  be 
what  they  were.  This  fate  has  generally  been  held  as  an 
impersonal,  undefined  power.  The  old  Greeks  and  Romans 
spoke  of  Father  Jove  himself  as  being  subject  to  its  sway. 
The  gods  of  Olympus  were  not  supreme,  for  fate  reigned 
over  them.  This  fate  was  not  a  deity  supreme  over  the  gods 
that  sat  on  Olympus  :  it  was  simply  that  mysterious  force  that 
seemed  so  many  times  to  thwart  all  the  previsions  of  man 
and  to  determine  destiny  in  spite  of  all  that  man  could  do. 

The  next  theory  that  I  shall  notice  is  that  which  is  very 
familiar  to  you  all,  by  name  at  least,  whether  you  have  ever 
taken  the  trouble  to  understand  it  or  not, —  the  doctrine  of 
predestination.  Practically,  in  its  working  among  men,  it  is 
substantially  the  same  as  the   doctrine  of  fate,  only  there  is 


Is  Man  Free?  51 

this  difference  :  the  theologians  who  hold  this  doctrine  do 
not  speak  of  an  impersonal,  indefinite  power,  but  of  a  per- 
sonal will,  a  God  who,  before  the  worlds  were  made,  deter- 
mined that  out  of  all  possible  universes  he  would  create  this 
one ;  out  of  all  possible  kinds  of  beings,  to  inhabit  this 
world,  he  would  create  man.  He  determined  that  he  would 
create  him  just  as  he  did,  for  a  specific  purpose ;  that  he 
would  place  him  in  the  garden  of  Eden ;  he  would  so  situate 
him  that  he  would  fall,  and  out  of  that  fall  would  issue  all 
the  facts  of  the  world  just  as  they  have  appeared  in  all  these 
unfolding  centuries  of  time.  This  is  the  doctrine  of  predes- 
tination,—  that  God,  before  anything  was,  determined  "  what- 
soever Cometh  to  pass." 

Some  theologians,  more  tender-hearted  than  logical  or 
consistent,  have  attempted  to  evade  the  harsher  side  of  the 
doctrine  by  saying  that  God  determined  the  good,  but  only 
permitted  the  evil.  But,  when  you  take  into  consideration 
the  fact  that,  on  this  theory,  God  created  the  universe,  that 
he  made  man  just  what  he  was,  knowing  definitely  just  what 
he  would  do,  and  placed  him  in  just  the  circumstances  where 
he  did  place  him,  foreseeing  all  the  time  that  these  results 
would  follow  from  the  causes  that  he  had  started,  you  will 
very  easily  see  that  it  is  tender-heartedness  and  not  logic, 
that  draws  any  such  distinction.  The  responsibility  of  the 
world  as  it  is,  on  the  theory  of  predestination,  cannot  be 
evaded  or  shifted.  It  goes  back  ultimately  to  him  who  de- 
termined it. 

There  has  been  another  class  of  theologians,  who,  though 
tender-hearted  toward  sin  and  suffering,  as  it  came  before 
them  in  actual  life,  have  been  —  although  it  seems  strange 
to  think  of  it  —  logically  consistent  in  carry-ing  out  this  doc- 
trine. Dr.  Emmons,  the  famous  Massachusetts  theologian 
of  the  last  century,  carried  it  so  far  as  to  declare  that,  at  any 


52  Beliefs  about  Man, 

particular  period  of  the  history  of  the  world,  God  creates 
and  determines  just  precisely  the  amount  not  only  of  good 
and  of  happiness  that  shall  exist,  but  also  the  sin,  the  crime, 
and  the  sorrow ;  that  he  is  the  active,  efficient  agent  in  the 
arm  of  the  man  that  strikes  a  blow  that  results  in  a  murder, 
just  as  much  as  he  is  in  the  arm  and  heart  of  the  good 
Samaritan  that  binds  up  the  wounds  and  sores  of  humanity. 
And  Dr.  Gardner  Spring,  the  eminent  theologian  of  New 
York,  also  carried  it  out  to  this  same  logical  result.  Once, 
when  a  friend  asked  him  why  he  supposed  there  were  not 
more  converts  to  the  church,  he  answered  consistently,  "  I 
suppose  God  converts  just  as  many  people  as  he  wants  con- 
verted." This  is  logical  predestination.  I  shall  not  stay  to 
discuss  it. 

The  third  is  the  theory  of  free-will.  Perhaps  you  will  be 
surprised  that  I  speak  of  this  as  one  of  those  simply  to  be 
outlined  and  passed  by ;  and  yet  such  is  the  position  to  which 
all  the  thought  and  study  of  years  have  compelled  me.  What 
do  we  mean  by  free  will  ?  For  we  must  have  a  clear  and 
distinct  conception  of  it  in  our  minds  before  we  are  fitted  to 
judge  whether  or  not  it  holds  good  as  a  philosophy  of  man. 
I  am  now  conscious  of  being  free  to  do  as  I  please-.  I  can 
continue  speaking,  or  I  can  stop  and  go  into  my  study.  I 
can  choose  what  thought  I  will  utter  next,  I  can  pursue  one 
line  of  argument  or  another.  But  this  does  not  express  the 
doctrine  of  free-will.  If  I  say,  "  Yesterday,  I  might  have 
done  something  that  I  did  not  do,  provided  I  had  wished  to 
do  it,"  I  am  not  giving  utterance  to  the  doctrine  of  free-will; 
I  am  only  expressing  what  all  of  us  believe.  And  yet  I  pre- 
sume large  numbers  of  people  think  they  are  giving  expres- 
sion to  the  doctrine  of  free-will  when  they  say,  "  I  am  con- 
scious of  the  power  to  do  as  I  please  "  ;  but  that  is  not  it  at 
all.     The  question  is  whether,  back  of  the  willing,  you  have 


Is  Man  Free?  53 

power  spontaneously  to  evolve  and  develop  choices  them- 
selves. Sir  William  Hamilton,  the  great  Scotch  metaphysi- 
cian, says,  before  the  doctrine  of  free-will  can  be  main- 
tained, it  must  be  proved  not  only  that  a  man  can  do  as  he 
wills,  but  that  he  can  will  as  he  wills.  I  know  not  whether  I 
can  make  myself  clear  on  this  very  subtle  point.  The  ques- 
tion is  as  to  whether  the  will  is  an  independent  power  that 
originates  choices,  that  spontaneously  expresses  itself,  with- 
out being  determined  by  motives,  by  the  surroundings,  or  by 
the  character  of  the  man  who  chooses.  Let  us  put  our- 
selves in  the  attitude  that  the  common  mind  must  be  in  con- 
cerning it.  Suppose  a  barbarian  for  the  first  time  in  his  life 
should  see  this  clock,  here  in  the  church  before  us.  He 
might  suppose  at  first  sight,  as  the  hands  go  around  and  it 
strikes  the  hour,  that  it  was  a  living  being,  the  hands  mov- 
ing as  an  expression  of  the  will  of  this  mysterious  power. 
There  is  nothing  apparent  on  the  clock  face  that  determines 
that  the  hands  shall  move  just  as  they  do.  But,  if  you  take 
the  face  off  and  show  him  what  are  the  forces  at  work  that 
determine  that  the  hands  shall  move  thus  and  so,  you  have 
given  him  a  new  view  of  the  whole  question. 

I  say,  I  have  power  to  do  as  I  please.  But  suppose  there 
is  another  power  back  of  my  consciousness  that  determines 
that  I  shall  please  to  do  so  and  so,  then  what  ?  Free-will, 
then,  in  any  proper  use  of  language,  does  not  say  merely  that 
I  am  free  to  do  as  I  please,  but  must  say,  I  am  free  to  please 
as  I  please,  that  I  am  free  to  originate  choices.  If  the  free- 
dom of  the  will  means  anything,  it  means  that  the  will  is 
an  independent,  spontaneous,  self-acting  power.  And  that  I 
cannot  hold. 

I  come  now  to  the  next  theory,  and  the  one  which  all  my 
study  and  thought  has  compelled  me  to  hold, — the  scien- 
tific doctrine  of  necessity.    This,  as  you  will  see,  is  not  fate, 


54  Beliefs  about  Man, 

neither  is  it  predestination.  It  is  something  quite  distinct 
and  apart  by  itself. 

Now,  in  order  that  we  may  proceed  clearly  with  the  un- 
folding of  our  subject,  I  must  ask  you  to  get  clearly  in  mind 
a  definition  of  the  will.  What  do  we  mean  when  we  talk 
about  it  ?  For  convenience  of  discussion,  as  I  have  before 
said,  we  map  off  and  divide  up  this  one  human  nature  of 
ours  ;  and  we  say  that  the  imagination  makes  excursions  into 
the  unknown,  the  heart  feels,  the  brain  thinks,  and  the  will 
determines.  But  a  little  thought  will  convince  you  that  this 
is  simply  a  mental  division  for  convenience  of  conversation. 
It  does  not  represent  any  real  distinction  in  human  nature 
itself.     It  is  not  a  something  in  me  that  wills. 

My  will  is  not  a  driver  on  a  stage-coach,  sitting  on  the  box, 
holding  the  reins  of  my  nature  in  his  hand,  and  deciding  that 
I  shall  go  this  way  or  that.  No  such  dominant  power  rules 
over  the  faculties  of  my  being.  The  will  is  simply  the  utter- 
ance of  myself.  It  is  not  a  "will  "  that  determines,  /de- 
termine. In  other  words,  the  will  is  only  the  majority  vote, 
so  to  express  it,  of  the  individual.  It  is  the  resultant  of  the 
sum  total  of  forces  that  constitute  me  wdiat  I  am^  and  that 
play  upon  me  on  every  side.  Analyze  it  a  little,  and  see. 
There  is  somewhat  about  me  that  constitutes  what  I  call  my- 
self. A  large  part  of  this  element — I  know  not  how  much 
—  has  been  derived  by  inheritance  from  my  ancestors.  I 
have  modified  this  in  a  thousand  ways  by  my  own  thoughts, 
words,  and  actions.  Then  I  am  placed  in  a  certain  environ- 
ment of  circumstances.  I  would  like  to  do  this,  or  I  would 
like  to  do  that;  but  here  comes  in  a  deterrent  force,  that 
says,  "  If  you  do  so  and  so,  such  and  such  an  unpleasant  re- 
sult will  follow."  Friends  dissuade  me  from  following  this 
path,  and  say,  "I  prefer  you  shall  do  something  else." 
And  so  there  play  upon  me  these  forces.     Pleasant  and  un- 


Is  Man  Free?  55 

pleasant  probabilities  appeal  to  me.  The  wishes  of  friends, 
public  opinion,  popular  applause,  the  desire  to  do  good,  the 
wish  to  be  useful  to  my  fellow-men, —  all  these  ten  thousand 
forces  play  upon  me  ;  and,  as  a  final  result,  I  decide  in  a 
particular  case,  "  I  will  do  so  and  so."  Now,  when  I  have 
made  that  decision,  you  are  right  in  saying  that  I  have  willed. 
There  is  no  other  will  that  has  determined  it.  There  is  no 
metaphysical  power  in  me  that  has  decided  how  I  shall  act. 
/have  decided  that  I  will  follow  such  a  course.  This,  I  take 
it,  is  the  rational  definition  of  what  is  meant  by  the  will. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  doctrine  of  necessity.  It  means 
simply  an  extension  over  the  realm  of  human  nature  of  the 
law  of  cause  and  effect.  It  means  that  nothing  happens  with- 
out a  cause  in  me,  or  in  you,  any  more  than  it  does  any- 
where else.  We  know,  for  example,  that  the  stars  over 
our  heads  follow  certain  determined  courses,  keeping  to  a 
certain  order,  because  of  certain  forces  acting  on  them. 
Their  movements  are  orderly  and  intelligent.  In  regard  to 
the  inorganic  world  underneath  our  feet,  we  also  recog- 
nize everywhere  perfect  order.  Cause  and  effect  hold  good 
there.  In  the  realm  of  the  vegetable  world,  among  the 
grasses,  the  flowers,  and  the  trees,  we  trace  perfect  order. 
We  know,  if  we  plant  a  grain  of  corn,  corn  will  grow  from 
it.  The  conditions  being  what  they  should  be,  we  can  count 
on  certain  results  following  from  certain  causes.  In  the 
animal  world,  we  find  precisely  the  same  thing,  the  law  of 
cause  and  effect  prevailing  ever^'where.  The  doctrine  of 
necessity  extends  this  principle  over  the  whole  realm  of  man, 
and  says  man  is  not  an  irrational  being ;  he  acts  under  the 
influence  of  causes,  is  governed  by  motives,  by  considera- 
tions that  lead  him  this  way  or  that.  You  know  perfectly  well 
that,  if  the  world  were  not  governed  by  the  laws  of  cause 
and   effect,  there  would   be   no   possibility  of   study,  there 


$6  Beliefs  about  Man. 

would  be  no  possibility  of  organizing  sciences.  You  could 
never  know  anything.  Suppose  that  I  could  not  count  on 
the  properties  of  iron  remaining  what  they  are,  what  would 
be  the  use  of  building  an  iron  bridge  ?  Next  week,  it  might 
become  wood  or  some  brittle  metal,  and  utterly  fail  to  meet 
the  calls  I  should  make  upon  it.  So  in  every  department. 
The  world  would  be  insane  :  it  would  be  one  wild  chaos  of 
chance  and  disorder,  unless  this  law  of  cause  and  effect  held 
everywhere.  I  believe  it  holds  good  in  human  nature  as 
well  as  everywhere  else.  This  is  the  scientific  doctrine  of 
necessity. 

Let  us  consider  two  or  three  objections  against  necessity 
and  in  favor  of  what  is  popularly  called  free-will ;  and  later 
we  will  consider  two  or  three  points  that  look  the  other  way. 

Men  are  accustomed  to  say  that  there  is  no  use  arguing 
about  the  question  of  free-will,  for  it  is  a  doctrine  of  com- 
mon-sense :  every  man  knows  he  is  free.  But  we  know  also 
that  common-sense  has  been  a  great  many  times  mistaken 
in  the  history  of  this  world.  Common-sense, —  what  does  it 
mean  ?  It  means  simply  that  stock  of  intelligence  which  has 
become  portable  in  the  crowd,  and  can  be  passed  from  hand 
to  hand  like  current  coin.  It  means  the  stock  of  common 
opinions  that  are  held  by  the  majority.  And  many  and 
many  a  time,  as  Huxley  has  said,  common-sense  is  only 
another  name  for  *'  common  ignorance."  It  needs  to  be 
supplemented,  now  and  again,  by  a  little  sense  that  is  not  so 
common.  Common-sense  teaches  us,  even  to-day,  that  the 
world  is  flat.  It  taught  that  for  thousands  of  years,  and  it 
took  a  great  while  to  argue  into  the  common-sense  of  the 
crowd  the  belief  which  is  now  established  beyond  question. 
Common-sense  teaches  us  every  day  that  the  sun  rises  in  the 
east  and  sets  in  the  west ;  and  yet  we  know  that  it  is  not 
true.     If  a  man  had  never  seen  any  other  effect  of  the  power 


Is  Man  Free?  57 

of  the  sun  except  the  melting  of  wax  exposed  to  its  rays, 
he  would  say  that  it  was  the  quality  of  heat  to  melt  sub- 
stances. But,  if  he  put  wet  clay  in  the  sun  and  saw  its  effect 
on  that,  he  would  say  that  it  was  the  quality  of  the  sun's  heat 
to  make  things  hard  and  dry.  Common-sense  teaches  us  to- 
day that  we  tell  whether  a  surface  is  rough  or  smooth  by 
looking  at  it ;  but  we  know  that  we  do  not.  The  question  is 
determined  by  touch ;  and  the  skilful  painter  will  produce 
effects  with  his  brush  so  carefully  and  perfectly  imitating 
nature  that  you  cannot  tell  whether  the  surface  is  rough  or 
smooth  until  you  feel  it.  Common-sense  teaches  us  that 
color  inheres  in  the  thing  we  look  at.  Yet  we  know  per- 
fectly well  that  the  same  fabric  which  was  blue  by  daylight  is 
green  by  gaslight.  Thus,  we  often  find  that  we  have  to  revise 
our  observations  and  experiments,  and  reform  them  by  the 
aid  of  senses  that  are  rare,  and  developed  only  among  those 
minds  that  are  gifted  and  trained  to  the  exercise  of  special 
powers.  Common-sense  then  is  not  entirely  a  safe  guide  in 
the  matter  of  the  will. 

They  say  also,  "  If  man  is  not  perfectly  free,  why  do 
you  punish  anybody  for  crime,  why  do  you  blame  anybody 
for  anything  that  he  does  ?  "  You  are  aware  perhaps  —  if  not, 
it  is  true  —  that  barbaric  man  was  inclined  always  and  in- 
stinctively to  abuse  and  beat  and  punish  anything  that  hurt 
him.  He  did  not  question  whether  the  power  that  hurt  meant 
to  do  so  or  not.  Children,  too, —  little  barbarians  as  they 
are,  all  of  them,  at  the  outset, —  illustrate  precisely  this  same 
quality.  A  child  abuses  or  beats  his  playthings  when  of- 
fended with  them,  simply  under  the  influence  of  this  passion 
that  hates  what  hurts  or  displeases,  without  reasoning  as  to 
whether  the  object  is  responsible  or  not.  I  can  remember, 
when  I  was  a  little  boy,  standing  with  one  of  my  brothers  by 
the  stove  in  the  old  farm-house,  getting  warm  before  going  to 


58  Beliefs  about  Man. 

bed,  when  accidentally  he  burned  himself;  and  under  this 
impulse,  so  common  among  children,  he  seized  a  stick  of 
wood  and  began  to  beat  the  stove  until  he  broke  it  in  his 
anger.  This  illustrates  the  power  of  this  passion.  In  the 
Middle  Ages,  it  was  common  for  a  king  to  vent  his  wrath  on 
any  messenger  who  brought  him  bad  tidings,  although  he 
knew  perfectly  well  that  the  bearer  was  not  responsible.  I 
take  it  that  we  are  not  yet  civilized  enough  to  have  outgrown 
this  impulse.  If  a  man  commits  a  crime,  without  raising 
the  question  as  to  the  degree  of  his  responsibility,  as  to 
whether  he  inherited  a  tendency  to  crime,  whether  he  is 
more  or  less  guilty  than  we  would  be  in  like  circumstances, 
we  visit  on  him  our  wrath  and  vengeance.  I  believe,  when 
the  world  is  civilized,  this  whole  conception  oi punishing  Ysxtn 
will  be  outgrown,  will  fade  out  of  the  world's  jurisprudence, 
and  will  remain  in  language  only  as  a  survival  of  a  more 
barbaric  time.  We  have  no  right  to  take  vengeance,  no 
right  to  measure  out  by  our  imagination  the  supposed 
degree  of  any  man's  guilt,  and  then  adjust  our  torture  to  fit 
the  degree  of  our  anger.  What  right  have  we  then  .?  We 
have  only  the  right  of  personal  and  social  self-protection. 
Suppose  there  is  a  tiger  loose  in  the  streets  of  Boston.  It 
is  an  instinct  of  the  tiger-nature  to  kill  and  to  devour. 
You  know  that  he  is  not  responsible,  that  he  is  no  more 
to  blame  than  a  hurricane.  Yet  you  take  your  measures  to 
protect  yourself  against  him,  even  to  the  extent  of  taking 
his  life.  If  there  is  an  overflow  of  the  Mississippi  River  and 
thousands  of  acres  are  submerged,  the  river  is  in  no  degree 
responsible  for  the  damage  it  does ;  but  we  build  levees  and 
dikes  to  keep  back  the  destructive  power.  An  avalanche  is 
not  responsible  for  sliding  down  the  mountain-side ;  yet  the 
Alpine  traveller  takes  measures  for  self-protection  against  its 
force. 


Is  Man  Free?  59 

So  our  theory  of  the  will  cannot  make  us  helpless  in  the 
presence  of  crime.  We  have  the  right  and  the  duty  of  self- 
defence.  No  matter  whether  a  man  is  insane,  or  whether  he 
is  simply  criminal,  as  we  call  it,  all  we  need  to-day  and  all 
we  have  a  right  to  do  is  to  see  to  it  that  he  shall  not  work 
harm  to  society.  And,  if  it  be  needful  that  he  be  put  out  of 
the  way,  we  have  the  right  even  to  that  extent.  This,  then,  is 
no  argument  against  the  necessity  of  human  action. 

Let  us  consider  another  objection  which  is  supposed  to 
be  conclusive.  If  I  act  under  law,  if  my  will  is  deter- 
mined by  what  I  am  and  by  the  motives  that  influence  me, 
why  do  I  ever  feel  remorse  ?  It  seems  to  me  perfectly  natural 
that  this  feeling  should  spring  up.  Have  we  not  seen  the 
mother,  whose  little  child  has  died,  who  wrings  her  hands  and 
almost  breaks  her  heart,  and  who  says :  "  Oh,  if  I  had 
only  known  !  If  I  had  only  done  so  and  so,  I  might  have 
warded  off  this  calamity ! "  And  yet  reflection  convinces 
even  her  that  she  did  the  best  she  could  under  the  circum- 
stances, with  the  wisdom  she  possessed.  But  all  her  logic 
does  not  turn  back  the  tide  of  feeling  that  sweeps  over  her 
desolated  heart.  She  mourns  and  regrets  and  sorrows  still. 
You  remember  those  pathetic  words  of  Whittier's  at  the  close 
of  "Maud  Miiller":  — 

"  For  of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 
The  saddest  are  these,  —  It  might  have  been." 

If  what  ?  If  Maud  Miiller  and  the  judge  and  the  circum- 
stances and  a  thousand  things  had  been  what  they  were  not. 
And  yet  every  one  knows  that,  if  we  could  go  back  and  re- 
produce exactly  the  same  circumstances,  and  put  the  people 
in  those  circumstances,  just  as  they  were  at  that  moment, 
they  would  act  precisely  the  same  again.  I  feel  remorse,  I 
feel  sorrow  for  what  I  did  that  injured  another's  life,  just  as 


6o  Beliefs  about  Man. 

I  regret  any  ill  result  of  something  I  have  done  ;  yet  I  know- 
that  put  me  back  into  yesterday,  just  what  I  was  yesterday, 
seeing  things  as  I  did,  feeling  things  as  I  did,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  motives  that  played  upon  me  yesterday,  and  I 
should  necessarily  do  what  I  did  yesterday. 

I  believe  that  this  remorse  may  be  carried  too  far,  not  only 
in  a  philosophical  sense,  but  even  so  as  to  work  moral  injury. 
What  is  the  use  of  remembering  the  past,  except  as  it  becomes 
a  motive  power  in  controlling  the  future  ?  It  was  very  subtle 
wisdom  in  the  author  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  to  picture  the 
most  terrible  foe  of  the  Christian  life  in  the  person  of  Giant 
Despair,  who  is  the  mightiest  enemy  that  "  Christian  "  meets 
all  the  way  from  the  City  of  Destruction  to  the  Celestial  City. 
And  what  does  it  mean  ?  Simply  that  when  despair,  hope- 
lessness, has  taken  possession  of  the  heart  of  man,  there  is 
nothing  left  for  him  to  do  but  to  die. 

Ruin,  and  only  ruin,  stares  him  in  the  face.  Despair  there- 
fore may  be  carried  to  a  destructive  degree.  We  should 
remember  the  mistakes  of  yesterday,  not  by  sitting  down 
with  mournful  face  and  broken  heart  and  wailing  out  our  life 
over  them  ;  we  should  remember  them  only  as  motives  and 
mainsprings  for  some  grander  deed  to-morrow,  remember- 
ing the  mistake,  so  as  not  to  commit  it  a  second  time.  Re- 
morse, the  fear  of  punishment,  the  fear  of  evil  results ;  these 
are  valuable  only  as  they  become  motive  forces  determining 
what  we  shall  do  next. 

I  must  now  pass  by  these,  and  turn  to  the  positive  side 
of  the  question.  The  doctrine  of  necessity,  then,  it  seems  to 
me,  has  every  argument,  every  logical  method,  every  fact  in 
human  history,  in  its  favor.  As  I  said  a  moment  ago,  unless 
man  is  under  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  there  is  no  use  in 
trying  to  study ;  there  is  no  possibility  of  a  science  of  poli- 
tics, a  science  of  society,  of  ethics,  of  any  science  of  any- 


Is  Man  Free?  6i 

thing  human.  For,  no  matter  what  a  man's  character  might 
be,  there  would  be  no  possible  way  of  counting  on  what  he 
might  do  next,  if  the  will  is  uncaused  and  in  that  sense  free. 
The  will  is  not  free  because  I  can  do  as  I  please.  I  must 
feel  as  I  look  back  at  the  past  that  I  did  what  I  did  necessa- 
rily, being  what  I  then  was.  So  that,  as  I  have  already  said, 
for  me  to  say  I  might  have  done  differently  from  what  I  did, 
in  coming  here  this  morning,  seems  to  me  an  absurdity.  I 
might  have  gone  somewhere  else,  had  I  wanted  to  ;  but  I  did 
not.  Under  the  engagements  that  controlled  me,  played  on 
by  the  motives  that  determined  my  actions  every  moment  of 
my  life,  I  did  what  I  did;  and  in  precisely  the  same  cir- 
cumstances I  should  do  it  again. 

There  is  another  thing  that  seems  to  me  conclusive.  Did 
you  ever  think  that,  if  the  will  is  spontaneously  free,  there 
would  be  no  such  thing  possible  as  human  character  ?  What 
is  character .?  What  do  I  mean  when  I  say,  "  There  is  an 
honest  man  ;  there  is  a  man  who  tells  the  truth,  whom  I  can 
trust  every  day  of  my  life  "  ?  I  mean  this.  By  his  actions,  by 
his  choices,  by  the  whole  course  of  his  life,  he  has  built  up 
and  cemented  a  certain  type  of  manhood  that  I  can  count 
on  every  time.  But  no  such  thing  as  this  would  be  possible, 
if  the  will  were  a  spontaneously  acting  force,  not  deter- 
mined by  the  laws  of  cause-  and  effect.  Of  none  of  you, 
my  most  intimate  friends,  who  may  have  been  honest  all 
your  life  long,  if  the  will  is  not  under  the  law  of  cause  and 
effect,  have  I  any  assurance  that  you  may  not  commit 
a  burglary  to-morrow.  That  you  have  told  the  truth  a 
thousand  times  is  no  assurance  that  you  will  tell  it  the  one 
thousand  and  first  time.  But  I  say  you  have  built  up  a 
character.  This  character  is  a  determining  power,  directing 
the  course  of  the  will,  so  that  I  can  count  on  an  honest 
man's  being  honest  all  the  time,  a  truthful  man's  being  true, 


62  Beliefs  about  Man, 

2L  pure  man's  being  pure.  If  I  know  a  man  all  through,  I 
can  tell  what  he  will  do.  I  could  not  tell,  however,  if  the 
will  were  spontaneously  free,  if  there  were  no  laws  of 
human  conduct. 

One  more  point.  It  is  only  because  I  believe  that  the 
will  of  man  is  not  free,  in  this  sense,  that  I  have  courage  to 
work  for  the  deliverance  of  the  world  from  wrong.  Why  is 
it  that  we  seek  out  poor  children  from  the  Five  Points  and 
the  slums  of  the  North  End,  and  place  them  in  what  we  call 
pure  surroundings,  under  good  influences,  where  they  will  feel 
the  love  and  care  of  tliose  who  will  stand  to  them  in  the 
place  of  father  and  mother,  where  they  may  go  to  school, 
learn  something,  and  be  able  to  see  specimens  of  manhood 
that  will  give  them  a  sense  of  the  dignity  of  their  own 
natures  ?  Why  do  we  seek  sanitary  reform  as  bearing  on  the 
morals  of  the  community  ?  Why  do  we  build  school-houses, 
erect  churches,  and  establish  the  ten  thousand  influences  with 
which  we  surround  human  nature,  to  instruct,  to  elevate,  and 
lead  it  into  the  right  way  ?  For  the  simple  reason  that  we 
believe  in  the  law  of  cause  and  effect  as  bearing  on  human 
nature.  It  would  all  be  unutterably  absurd,  if  the  will  were 
free,  independent  and  spontaneous  in  its  action.  What 
would  be  the  use  of  taking  a  child  from  the  influences  that 
tend  downward  ?  If  the  will  is  free  it  has  the  power  to  do 
right  under  one  set  of  circumstances  as  well  as  another. 

If  motives  do  not  determine  character,  why  seek  to  sur- 
round men  by  good  motives }  Why  do  we  try  to  get  a  man 
accustomed  to  drink  to  his  own  hurt  to  sign  the  pledge.? 
Why  do  we  bring  him  into  the  society  of  people  who  have 
taught  themselves  self-control  ?  Because  we  know  if  he  is 
in  the  presence  of  liquor,  and  is  under  no  restraint,  no  mo- 
tive to  abstain,  he  will  drink.  But  we  know  that  if  he  is  a 
man  of  truth,  if  he  is  man  enough  to  stand  by  his  word,  and 


Is  Man  Free?  6^ 

if  he  has  said  he  will  not  drink,  he  will  keep  his  pledge.  So 
with  any  man  placed  in  temptation,  who  will  fall  every  time 
he  is  so  placed,  we  foresee  this  and  surround  him  with  in- 
fluences toward  good,  because  we  believe,  deep-down  in  our 
hearts,  that  it  is  character  and  motive  that  determine  the 
will,  that  lead  men  to  pursue  this  or  that  course  of  conduct. 
When  we  admit  this  doctrine  of  necessity  as  controlling 
human  life  and  character,  then  we  shall  have  a  leverage 
that  will  hold,  by  which  we  can  lift  society  and  the  world. 
And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no  benevolent,  reform,  or 
philanthropic  society  on  earth  that  does  not  proceed  on  the 
assumption  that  this  doctrine  is  true. 

There  is  not  a  man  nor  a  woman  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
that,  other  things  being  equal,  does  not  desire  that  which 
seems  to  him  conducive  to  his  own  highest  welfare  and 
happiness.  There  is  not  a  society  that  does  not  desire  its 
own  welfare  and  happiness.  If  this  is  a  sane  and  righteous 
universe,  then  keeping  the  laws  of  this  universe  must  tend 
toward  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  the  individual  and  of 
society.  If,  then,  we  believe  that  men  are  governed  by 
motives,  all  we  need  to  do  to  lift  up  and  save  mankind  is  to 
make  them  wise  enough  to  know  that  following  their  own 
eternal  desire  for  welfare  and  happiness  will  lead  them 
into  the  ways  of  truth  and  right. 

The  doctrine  of  necessity  gives  us  this  leverage.  It  gives 
us  motive  power,  it  gives  us  a  way  to  work,  it  gives  us  confi- 
dence that  our  work  will  not  be  without  its  appropriate 
results. 


THE  MOTIVE  FORCES  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 


At  the  close  of  my  discourse  last  Sunday  morning,  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  humanity,  like  all  other  departments 
of  the  world,  is  orderly,  is  under  law,  controlled  by  motives 
that  are  intelligible  and  that  can  be  calculated.  Taking 
now  the  next  logical  step  in  dealing  with  our  great  theme,  we 
are  brought  face  to  face  to-day  with  two  great  questions : 
What  are  the  motives  that  control  men?  And  are  these 
motives  right  and  adequate  to  produce  human  progress  and 
perfection  ? 

As  we  study  the  inorganic  world,  whether  we  make  it 
include  the  stars  over  our  heads  or  simply  the  elemental 
forces  of  the  planet  which  we  inhabit,  we  discover  every- 
where that  powers  are  at  work  that  are  intelligible,  that  are 
orderly,  and  that  these  powers  are  competent  to  produce 
grand  and  beautiful  results.  For  example,  as  we  look  at  the 
law  of  gravitation,  we  see  how  beautifully  it  works,  how 
efficient  it  is,  what  perfect  order  results  from  it.  As  we 
study  the  movements  of  the  tides,  the  laws  of  the  winds,  the 
rains,  the  powers  of  chemical  attraction  and  affinity,  the  laws 
of  crystallization, —  as  we  look  all  over  the  world  and  see 
those  forces  at  work  which  have  shaped  our  planet  and 
brought  it  into  its  present  condition,  that  have  lifted  up  and 
then  sculptured  the  mountains,  that  have  scooped  out  the 
valleys,  created  our  lake  basins,  marked  out  the  watercourses 


Motive  Forces.  65 

for  our  great  rivers, —  everywhere  we  find  perfect  order  and 
beautiful  results.  And  we  find  these  powers  to  be  good, 
efficient,  capable  of  producing  the  desired  ends. 

If  we  take  a  step  above  the  inorganic  world  and  enter  the 
vegetable  kingdom,  we  find  precisely  the  same  thing  true 
here.  There  is  order,  there  is  power.  And  this  power  is 
good,  relative  to  that  which  it  is  desired  to  produce  by  it ; 
and  it  results  in  forms  of  beauty  and  use.  Who  thinks  to 
criticise  a  rose }  That  mysterious  force  that  has  lifted  the 
little  stem  above  the  soil,  that  bids  it  grow  and  develop  to  its 
perfect  size  and  shape,  and  form  that  delicate  leaf,  tinted  as 
no  artist  on  earth  could  paint  it,  and  then  makes  it  fragrant, 
to  delight  the  senses  of  all  living  creatures, —  who  can  crit- 
icise the  power  that  is  there  at  work .?  It  is  right  and  it  is 
competent  to  the  perfection  of  these  results. 

Take  another  step.  As  we  come  up  into  the  animal  king- 
dom, we  find  the  same  thing  holds  true.  There  is  order, 
there  is  law,  there  is  a  power  at  work ;  and  the  power  is  a 
good  power,  producing  the  proper  results,  the  perfection  of 
the  animal  world.  We  never  think  of  bringing  questions  of 
perfect  or  imperfect,  of  right  or  wrong,  in  here.  The  eagle 
poising  his  mighty  wings,  floating  through  the  air,  flying  in 
the  face  of  the  sun  or  over  his  mountain  crag,  is  a  piece  of 
work  that  only  fills  us  with  a  sense  of  power  and  with  admi- 
ration ;  and,  if  he  preys  upon  some  smaller  species,  we  never 
think  of  criticising  him  for  it  as  though  he  were  doing  wrong. 
He  is  only  fulfilling  a  law  of  his  own  nature.  He  is  doing 
that  which,  judged  by  the  eagle's  standard,  is  right,  and  can 
be  no  otherwise.  And  so  of  every  other  thing  below  man 
that  flies  or  creeps,  or  walks  or  runs,  or  lives,  on  the  surface 
of  the  earth. 

But  as  we  take  one  step  more  into  the  region  of  humanity, 
at  first  this  principle  does  not  seem  to  hold.     We  find  what 


66  Beliefs  about  Man. 

we  call  sin,  wrong,  disorder,  evil ;  and  our  first  impulse  is  to 
criticise  the  motive  forces  which  are  at  work  in  humanity. 
We  are  inclined  to  one  of  two  opinions,  either  that  these 
motive  forces  are  wrong,  or  else  that  they  are  inadequate : 
they  do  not  produce  the  results  that  we  think  we  have  a 
right  to  expect  of  them.  We  perhaps  criticise  the  world  in 
the  vein  and  spirit  of  Heber,  where  he  says  of  that  beautiful 

Eastern  land, — 

"  Every  prospect  pleases, 
And  only  man  is  vile  " ; 

or  we  say  with  Byron, — 

"  All,  save  the  spirit  of  man,  is  divine." 

The  line  of  demarcation  is  popularly  drawn  between  all 
the  rest  of  the  universe  and  man.  We  have  a  feeling  that 
the  motive  forces  that  control  him  are  either  wrong  or  in- 
adequate. 

These,  then,  are  the  two  great  questions  that  face  us.  We 
want  to  find  out  what  these  motive  forces  are,  and  why  they 
do  not  produce  the  same  results  of  perfection  and  order  that 
are  observable  in  all  other  parts  of  the  universe. 

First,  what  are  the  motive  forces  that  control  human  life } 
For  our  purpose,  they  may  be  roughly  divided  into  two  grand 
classes,  the  internal  and  the  external.  There  is  first  to  be 
considered  the  inherent  nature  of  man,  that  which  he  is  by 
virtue  of  the  fact  that  he  is  a  man ;  that  which  he  is  as  the 
result  of  inheritance ;  the  capital  stock  of  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings and  impulses  and  tendencies  with  which  he  is  born  into 
the  world.  These  internal  conditions  of  nature  and  inheri- 
tance are  modified  again  by  the  man's  own  individual  feeling 
and  thinking  and  acting.  That  is,  I  was  born  so  and  so; 
but  since  that  time,  in  the  years  that  have  passed,  I  have 
modified  my  nature  in  a  thousand  various  ways  by  my  own 
actions,  impulses,  and  thoughts.     This,  then,  is  one  side. 


I 


Motive  Forces.  67 

As  we  look  out  over  the  world,  we  have  to  take  account  of 
all  those  things  which  constitute  the  conditions  of  human  life, 
—  the  country  in  which  a  man  is  born,  the  race  to  which  he 
belongs,  the  climate,  the  type  of  civilization,  the  grade  of 
civilization,  the  particular  degree  of  culture  that  immediately 
surrounds  him,  the  influences  whether  good  or  bad,  the  re- 
ligious thought  and  tendency  of  the  time,  the  business  op- 
portunities, and  all  the  ten  thousand  things  that  make  up  the 
external  conditions  of  his  life. 

Man,  then,  is  shaped  by  these  internal  and  external  forces. 
To  give  a  little  more  definiteness,  I  may  consider  these 
motives  all  as  one,  and  speak  of  that  which  I  have  classed 
as  external  simply  as  the  conditions  or  limitations  or  incite- 
ments to  activity,  while  I  find  the  impulses  all  within. 

There  is,  when  you  analyze  deeply,  when  you  resolve  all 
the  multifarious  manifestations  of  life,  all  the  impulses  of 
man,  into  their  simplest  forms,  but  one  grand  motive  which 
plays  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  development  of  human  life, — 
that  is,  the  one  never-resting  force  of  hunger,  or  desire.  Man 
is  simply  a  bundle  of  appetites.  He  is  one  grand  thirst  with 
a  thousand  mouths.  He  desires  life  ;  he  desires  happiness  ; 
he  desires  the  gratification  of  all  his  passions  ;  he  desires  the 
free  play  of  all  his  impulses ;  he  desires  love  ;  he  desires 
power  ;  he  desires  fame,  honor,  the  respect  of  his  fellow-man. 
You  see  him  reaching  out  this  way,  reaching  out  that,  ever 
seeking  to  possess  something  he  has  not,  or  to  become  some- 
thing he  is  not, —  one  great  impulse  that  reaches  out  for  its 
appropriate  satisfaction.  And  the  external  world,  in  this 
view  of  it,  we  only  look  upon  as  the  field  in  which  all  this 
hunger  may  feed,  as  the  theatre  on  which  all  these  impulses 
may  act  and  play  their  part,  as  the  conditions  of  satisfaction, 
the  limitations  of  desire. 

Now,  to  illustrate  clearly  what  I  mean,  let  us  compare  man, 


68  Beliefs  about  Mait. 

from  this  stand-point,  with  a  plant.  Take  any  plant  you 
please, —  shrub,  flower,  or  fruit-bearing  tree, —  and  what  it 
will  become  is  determined  by  two  things.  In  the  first  place, 
by  its  inherent  nature.  If  it  be  a  rose-bush,  no  soil,  no  sun, 
no  change  of  air,  during  the  lifetime  of  this  one  single  plant, 
can  turn  it  into  any  other  kind  of  shrub.  If  it  is  a  heliotrope, 
you  cannot  transform  it  suddenly  into  a  geranium.  What  it 
is  is  determined  by  its  own  inherent  nature.  Whether  it 
shall  be  all  that  it  is  capable  of  becoming  is  dependent 
entirely  on  its  external  surroundings,  upon  the  kind  of  soil 
in  which  you  plant  it,  upon  sunshine,  upon  rain,  upon  dew, 
upon  cultivation,  and  care.  If  you  take  a  plant  that  was 
born  and  fitted  to  develop  to  its  finest  in  the  tropics,  and 
transfer  it  to  the  far  north,  or  up  close  by  the  snow-line  on 
the  Alps,  it  can  never  become  what,  by  its  nature,  it  is  fitted 
to  be.  If  you  take  an  Alpine  flower  and  plant  it  under  the 
tropics,  it  can  never  develop  as  it  would  in  its  native  home. 
So  there  must  be  the  combination  of  these  two  things, —  first 
the  nature  of  the  plant,  and  then  the  conditions  of  its  devel- 
opment. 

Precisely  these  two  forces  are  the  ones  that  play  upon  the 
development  of  this  marvellous  human  nature  of  ours.  No 
possible  amount  of  training  can  produce  an  essential  change 
of  nature  in  man.  No  conceivable  amount  of  schooling 
could  have  converted  Milton  into  Newton.  No  change  of 
circumstances  could  have  made  Newton  the  author  of  Para- 
dise Lost  or  could  have  enabled  Milton  to  compose  the 
Frincipia.  The  man  who  has  no  musical  ability,  no  natural 
taste  or  faculty  in  that  direction,  cannot  become  a  master  of 
song,  simply  by  spending  his  life  in  conservatories,  and  train- 
ing the  poor  feeble  faculty  of  which  all  men  possess  the 
rudiments. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  man  with  the  mightiest  genius  in  any 


Motive  Forces.  69 

one  direction  may  have  his  whole  career  thwarted  by  the 
lack  of  appropriate  circumstances, —  as  a  rose,  fitted  to 
produce  a  gorgeous  flower  and  the  finest  incense  of  fra- 
grance, can  be  dwarfed  or  stunted  or  killed  by  surround- 
ings that  are  unfitted  to  bring  out  that  which  is  finest  and 
sweetest  in  it. 

So  I  suppose  it  to  be  true,  as  we  look  back  over  the  his- 
tory of  the  world,  that  we  are  at  liberty  to  say  there  have 
been  thousands  of  possible  generals  and  mighty  leaders  of 
the  world,  that  have  played  no  part  in  histor)'.  There  have 
been  thousands  of  possible  poets  who  have  never  sung  their 
songs.  There  have  been  thousands  of  possible  orators  who 
have  never  swayed  listening  assemblies  by  their  magnetic 
words.  If  our  war  of  the  Rebellion  had  not  come  just  when 
it  did,  if  it  had  been  postponed  twenty  years,  we  should 
never  have  heard  of  the  mighty  statesmanship  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  we  should  never  have  heard  of  the  deeds  that  made 
Grant  the  foremost  general  of  his  time.  And  yet  both  these 
men  would  have  been,  so  far  as  their  inherent  natures  were 
concerned,  all  that  they  since  became. 

These  two  forces,  then,  work  together  to  produce  the  grand 
results  of  our  human  life, —  the  inherent  nature  or  tendency 
and  the  external  condition. 

That  which  controls  man,  then,  is  this  one  hunger  to  which 
I  have  referred,  the  hunger  along  the  line  of  his  impulses, 
along  the  line  of  his  essential  nature ;  for  you  will  generally 
find  a  man  naturally  hungry  for  that  which  he  can  do,  for 
that  which  he  can  become.  He  desires  and  struggles  to  at- 
tain. The  outside  world  gives  him  opportunity,  or  crushes 
out  the  possibility  by  its  adverse  circumstances.  It  is  not 
simply  poetry,  then,  when  Gray,  in  his  "  Elegy  written  in  a 
Country  Churchyard,"  speaks  of  the  "  mute  inglorious  Mil- 
tons,"  of  the  "  Cromwells  "  never  heard  of,  and  of  the  "  vil- 


JO  Beliefs  about  Man. 

lage  Hampdens "  never  known  beyond  the  playgrounds  of 
their  childhood.  We  hunger,  we  thirst,  and  we  do  what 
we  can. 

Let  us  see  whether  these  natural  impulses,  this  desire  for 
money,  for  fame,  for  love,  all  these  appetites  that  tingle  and 
hunger  after  their  appropriate  satisfactions,  all  these  aspira- 
tions of  the  mind,  all  these  dreams  and  ambitions  that  lead 
and  lure  us  on,  are  right ;  whether,  if  we  guide  and  train 
them,  they  are  competent  to  produce  the  result  of  a  perfect 
world. 

Here,  I  must  place  before  you  the  two  great  antagonistic 
theories  of  human  nature  that,  in  some  form  or  other,  have 
dominated  the  world.  All  the  philosophies,  all  the  religions 
of  men,  have  been  shaped  and  colored  by  one  or  the  other  of 
these  grand  theories  of  human  nature.  I  shall  call  them  the 
Oriental  and  the  Occidental^  for  the  reason  that  nearly  all 
of  the  Oriental  religions  and  philosophies  have  taken  for 
granted  the  one,  while  our  modern  Occidental  theories  are 
beginning  to  repudiate  and  cast  this  away,  and  look  at  men 
from  the  other  stand-point. 

Now,  what  is  this  Oriental  theory?  It  is  that  man  is  essen- 
tially all  wrong.  His  desires,  his  impulses,  his  propensities, 
are  corrupt  and  depraved.  It  is  this  theory  which  has  given 
us  our  doctrine  of  the  fall  of  man  and  of  total  depravity.  It 
is  this  which  speaks  of  the  world  as  blighted,  and  which  talks 
about  worldliness  (that  is,  being  interested  in  the  affairs 
of  human  life)  as  an  evil.  It  is  this  that  John  had  in  mind 
when  he  said,  "  Love  not  the  world,  neither  the  things  that 
are  in  the  world."  This  leads  Paul  to  say  that  "the  carnal 
mind  is  enmity  against  God."  It  is  this  that  teaches  us  that 
he  who  loves  the  world  must  be  an  enemy  of  God.  It  is  this 
that  tells  us  to  crucify  the  body  and  crush  out  our  natural 
appetites,  feelings,  and  desires.     It  is  this  theory  that  pro- 


Motive  Forces.  yi 

duces  monasticism  and  asceticism  in  all  its  forms.  This 
made  men  feel  that,  in  order  to  please  God,  they  must  deny- 
all  the  natural  passions  and  instincts  of  their  nature ;  that  the 
perfect  saint  was  the  one  who  said  no,  to  every  human  im- 
pulse, who  denied  human  pleasure,  human  property,  human 
love,  even  that  of  wife  and  child ;  who  fled  from  all  those 
things  that  are  naturally  so  attractive  and  beautiful  to  us, 
thinking  them  wiles  of  the  evil  one ;  and  who  believed  that  if 
they  retired  to  some  cave  or  monastic  cell  and  whipped  and 
punished,  and  starved  and  tortured  themselves,  until  they 
had  crushed  out  everything  natural,  that  they  thus  came 
very  near  to  God,  and  when  at  last  they  had  broken  down 
or  beaten  through  the  walls  of  this  body,  which  they  called 
their  prison-house,  and  escaped,  that  then,  for  the  first  time, 
they  would  be  free  and  akin  to  the  divine,  linked  with  the 
nature  of  that  which  is  highest  and  best. 

It  is  this  philosophy  which  dominated  a  large  part  of  the 
speculations  of  Plato.  It  is  this  which  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
great  religion  which  to-day  is  believed  by  one-third  of  man- 
kind, the  Buddhist ;  for  Gautama  teaches  his  followers  that 
all  evil  springs  from  the  fact  that  men  have  desires, —  in 
other  words,  if  men  never  desired  anything,  they  would 
never  be  disappointed,  there  could  never  be  any  suffering, 
any  want.  And  he  teaches  them  that  the  way  toward  sal- 
vation is  to  crush  and  kill  out  every  wish.  The  philosophy 
is  that  of  repression  and  extinction  of  everything  natural 
and  human.  If  that  is  accomplished,  men  will  perhaps 
rise  to  that  condition  where  they  shall  care  for  nothing,  be 
anxious  for  nothing,  the  region  of  perpetual  calm,  that  is 
never  disturbed  by  the  ripple  of  an  emotion.  Attain  this 
condition,  and  you  are  on  the  border  land  of  Nir\-ana,  the 
Buddhist  heaven,  which  so  far  as  we  can  understand,  means 
that  we  are  on  the  border  of  —  nothing,  of  extinction. 


72  Beliefs  about  Man. 

This  is  the  theory  of  human  life  which  has  dominated 
Christendom,  which  has  given  color  to  the  history  of  the 
Church.  And  you  are  perfectly  well  aware  how  the  prevail- 
ing orthodoxies  of  the  day  tell  us  that  everything  natural  in 
man  is  wrong.  We  go  astray,  they  say,  from  the  moment  we 
are  born.  We  cannot  wish  or  think  or  feel  any  good  thing ; 
and,  if  we  are  ever  to  come  near  to  God,  all  these  natural 
desires  and  impulses  must  be  subdued.  We  must  have  our 
natural  heart  taken  away,  and  a  new  heart  substituted  in  its 
place.  We  must  learn  to  hate  the  things  that  we  naturally 
love,  we  must  learn  to  love  the  things  that  we  naturally 
hate. 

This  is  the  theory  that  underlies  the  theological  doctrine 
of  "  conversion  "  in  all  the  churches  to-day.  It  is  that  man 
in  his  natural  estate  is  something  helpless,  something  hateful 
to  God,  something  in  opposition  to  everything  that  is  right ; 
that  he  needs  a  radical  change,  must  tear  all  these  natural 
impulses  up  by  their  roots  and  plant  something  else  in  their 
stead. 

Out  of  this  theory  has  sprung  the  doctrine  of  endless  dam- 
nation ;  for  Edwards,  our  famous  New  England  theologian 
and  metaphysician,  was  only  logically  and  consistently  carry- 
ing out  this  belief,  when  he  pictured,  as  he  did,  a  man,  hon- 
est, perhaps  noble,  kind  and  true  in  his  home,  as  being 
potentially  at  enmity  with  God,  a  viper.  He  draws,  as  per- 
haps you  will  remember,  that  horrible  picture  of  God  hold- 
ing a  man  over  the  flames  of  perdition  until  the  innate 
devilishness  of  this  human  nature  is  developed,  and  it 
becomes  a  viper  in  its  hate,  and  turns  and  spits  its  venom 
in  the  very  face  of  God  1  It  is  this  theory  of  human 
nature  which  underlies  the  conception  of  man  as  being  all 
wrong,  naturally  selfish  and  evil,  needing  to  be  utterly 
changed  before  he  can  be  brought  into  accord  with  the 
will  and  law  of  (/od. 


Motive  Forces.  73 

This  I  have  called  the  Oriental  theory,  because,  so  far  as 
we  know,  it  was  born  in  the  Orient,  and  came  to  us  through 
the  Oriental  religions  and  philosophies,  from  which  we  have 
borrowed  the  still  prevalent  theories  of  our  day. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  the  theory  of  man  which  is 
held  by  the  scientific  leaders  and  teachers  of  the  world 
to-day, —  that  theory  which  treats  man,  equally  with  all  the 
rest  of  the  creation,  as  naturally  good  and  right ;  that  teaches 
that  man  ought  to  desire  just  what  he  naturally  does  desire ; 
that  it  is  not  wrong  for  him  to  love  this  beautiful  world  that 
is  our  mother,  and  on  whose  breast  we  live  and  from  whose 
bosom  we  draw  all  that  makes  life  fair  and  lovely.  It  teaches 
that  it  is  not  wrong  for  a  man  to  desire  wealth  ;  that  it  is  not 
wrong  to  desire  the  good-will  of  his  fellow-men,  honor,  fame, 
position,  and  the  respect  of  those  that  are  about  him. 

This  Occidental  theory  teaches  that  man  needs  no  reversal 
of  the  ordinary  motives  that  govern  him  ;  that  he  does  not 
need  to  have  them  torn  up  by  the  root ;  that  his  heart  is 
naturally  right.  It  does  not  need  to  be  taken  away  from  him 
and  another  put  in  its  place.  That  which  he  does  need  is 
direction,  education,  the  control  of  the  motives  that  are 
natural  and  that  already  exist;  and  then  this  education,  direc- 
tion, and  control  are  capable  of  producing  just  as  fair  and 
orderly  and  beautiful  results  in  human  nature  as  are  pro- 
duced in  the  other  departments  of  the  world. 

The  question  for  us  to  decide,  then,  is  between  these  two 
theories,  which  of  them  we  must  hold.  Let  me  outline  what 
seems  to  me  the  natural,  logical  result  of  the  working  of  these 
native  forces  of  human  life. 

Let  us  suppose  a  man  to  be  what  we  ordinarily,  though 
falsely,  call  selfish,  dominated  by  what  he  thinks  is  best  for 
him  ;  to  be  governed  by  self-love.  Take  such  a  man  as  that, 
educate  him,  make  him  wise,  let  him   learn  the   results  of 


74  Beliefs  about  Man. 

human  experience  here  in  this  life,  and  what  sort  of  a  man 
will  he  become  ? 

If  all  the  world  were  governed  by  these  motives,  and  were 
educated,  made  wise  enough  to  learn  the  principle  of  self- 
control,  what  kind  of  a  world  would  it  produce  ?  That,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  the  question  for  us  to  settle,  in  order  that  we 
may  decide  whether  we  can  hold  this  natural  theory  of  man 
or  not. 

Now  suppose  man  to  be  governed  simply  by  the  desire  to 
get  the  best  things  that  are  possible  for  himself,  that  he  de- 
sires to  become  as  complete  a  man  as  he  can,  to  get  all  the 
satisfaction  out  of  human  life  that  he  is  able,  what  sort  of  a 
life  would  such  a  man  as  that  lead  ?  Will  he  find  that  this 
grand  motive  power,  this  shaping,  controlling  force,  will  be- 
come modified  in  any  very  serious  way  by  the  experiences  of 
life?  In  the  first  place,  he  will  discover  that  there  are  a 
great  many  things  in  the  world  that  he  naturally  desires,  or 
that  he  would  naturally  take,  in  the  satisfaction  of  some  one 
of  his  appetites,  that  are  injurious  to  him.  Just  precisely  as 
the  lower  animal  world  has  learned  that  there  are  some  arti- 
cles of  food  that  are  poisonous  and  some  nutritious,  and 
has  therefore  learned  to  eschew  the  one  and  seek  out  the 
other ;  so  man,  governed  simply  by  the  desire  to  please  him- 
self, will  find,  as  the  result  of  his  experience,  that  he  cannot 
afford  to  indulge  indiscriminately  as  he  passes  through  the 
world.  He  finds  that  there  are  a  thousand  fruits  that  are 
sweet  to  the  taste  and  pleasant  to  the  eye,  that  are  desirable 
and  attractive,  which  at  the  same  time  are  in  their  results 
deadly.  He  discovers  growing  all  along  the  pathway  of 
human  life  that  which  has  come  to  be  figuratively  set  forth  as 
"Dead  Sea  fruit,"  "apples  of  Sodom,"  that  turn  to  ashes  in 
the  mouth,  to  bitterness  and  even  death  itself  as  they  are 
eaten.     Man,  then,  governed  simply  by  this  impulse  of  self- 


Motive  Forces.  75 

love,  learns  to  let  these  things  alone,  to  pass  them  by  and 
choose  that  which  is  really  good,  and  which  lifts  up  and  helps, 
which  gives  pleasure  with  no  sting  of  sorrow  after  it.  This, 
if  he  learns  perfectly  the  lesson  of  life,  will  be  the  result 
without  bringing  into  play  any  other  motive  than  that  of 
self-love. 

Consider  another  way  in  which  his  action  will  be  modified. 
As  he  goes  on  through  life,  he  will  not  only  learn  that  some 
things  are  in  their  nature  deadly,  but  he  will  learn  that  all 
things,  however  fair,  however  sweet,  however  well  fitted  to 
build  up  his  nature,  may  become  injurious  through  excess. 
Too  much  honey  satiates  and  cloys.  Too  much  study  inca- 
pacitates the  brain.  Too  much  exercise  fails  to  develop  mus- 
cular power,  but  rather  weakens.  Too  much  food  destroys 
the  very  object  of  eating  food  at  all,  and  cripples  the  digest- 
ive functions.  Too  much  drink,  of  even  that  which  may  be 
healthful  in  itself,  floods  and  injures  instead  of  helping  on 
the  natural  processes  of  life.  So  too  much  enjoyment  ener- 
vates, vitiates,  and  degrades  a  man's  faculties  and  powers. 
Too  much  of  what  commonly  goes  by  the  name  of  religion 
may  be  just  as  harmful  as  too  much  intoxicating  drink  or  too 
much  pleasure.  Too  much  art  culture,  too  much  devotion 
to  any  department  of  human  life,  may  overweight  and  over- 
balance human  nature,  and  throw  life  out  of  its  proportion, 
and  produce  results  precisely  contrary  to  what  a  wise  self- 
love  seeks. 

This  same  man,  governed  by  the  principle  of  self-love, 
would  learn  another  thing:  that  he  must  live  with  other 
people ;  that  he  must  get  along  with  other  men  and  women 
in  this  world,  with  those  who  are  governed  by  precisely  the 
same  motives  that  control  and  lead  him.  At  first,  he  is  apt 
to  feel  that  everything  which  he  wants,  if  used  or  taken  by 
anybody  else,  is  just  so  much  taken  away  from  him.     This  is 


7^  Beliefs  about  Man. 

precisely  the  attitude  of  the  ignorant  and  barbaric  mind. 
Take  two  tribes,  for  example  :  they  cannot  both  occupy  the 
same  hunting-ground.  They  naturally  consider  each  other 
enemies,  and  fight.  If  there  is  an  opportunity  to  gain  food 
or  a  place  for  fishing,  the  first  impulse  is  that  one  must  have 
the  exclusive  right,  and  the  other  must  be  kept  away  as  an 
enemy.  But  what  is  the  lesson  of  human  experience  t  Is  it 
not  precisely  the  reverse?  Suppose  I  am  governed  by  no 
higher  motive  than  the  desire  of  getting  the  most  possible 
out  of  life  :  I  do  not  want  to  own  all  the  land  in  the  world,  for 
in  that  way  I  should  push  far  away  from  me  all  neighborhood 
and  all  human  association ;  and  I  am  just  as  hungry  for  that 
as  I  am  for  land.  Suppose  I  can  control  all  the  property  in 
the  city,  and  pauperize  everybody  else :  I  cripple  the  very 
movement  of  civilization  that  makes  the  city  of  Boston  a 
pleasant  place  of  residence ;  I  destroy  the  very  end  that  I 
had  in  view.  Suppose  I  should  accumulate  around  myself 
all  the  books  of  the  world,  and  take  possession  of  all  the 
intelligence ;  suppose  I  could  borrow  or  seize  from  your 
brains  and  memories  all  that  you  know,  and  put  it  into  the 
circuit  of  my  own  brain,  would  I  be  gaining  a  desirable  end  .'* 
I  should  rather  be  isolating  myself,  making  myself  alone  in 
the  universe  ;  for  there  would  be  no  one  with  whom  I  could 
communicate,  no  one  who  would  understand  me,  no  one 
between  whom  and  myself  there  could  be  an  interplay  of  in- 
telligence. If  I  spoke,  there  would  be  no  one  to  listen.  I 
learn  then  true  wisdom.  I  learn  that  my  own  happiness,  my 
own  intelligence,  are  furthered  and  lifted  up  by  increasing 
the  finest  intelligence  of  the  world.  If  I  gather  to  myself  all 
the  brightness,  I  become  like  a  lone  star  in  the  heavens,  all 
its  beams  radiating  until  they  are  lost  in  the  abyss,  and  no 
other  planet,  no  other  tiniest  orb,  to  catch  one  ray  and  send 
it  back  again,  to  reflect  the  brightness  and  gladness  of  the 


Motive  Forces.  'jj 

central  beams.  Men  learn  by  experience  that,  if  they  wish  to 
be  healthy,  they  cannot  disregard  the  health  of  the  world. 

If  I  sit  in  a  palatial  residence  on  some  high  hill-top,  sur- 
rounded by  trees,  made  beautiful  by  all  the  landscape  gar- 
dener's art ;  if  I  sit  by  my  window  as  the  breeze  comes  in 
and  fans  my  cheek,  it  is  not  enough  that  everything  within 
the  limits  of  my  estate  shall  be  in  perfect  sanitary  condition. 
The  breezes  blow  around  the  world ;  and,  if  I  wish  them  to 
come  to  me  laden  with  inspiration  and  health,  I  must  see  to 
it  that  the  world  is  healthy.  If  I  have  no  other  motive  than 
my  own  well-being,  I  dare  not,  if  I  am  wise,  disregard  the 
welfare  of  the  farthest  tribe  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

I  have  carried  these  illustrations  far  enough  to  bring  before 
you  the  principle  I  wish  to  emphasize  as  the  one  important 
point  of  my  discourse.  I  believe  that  these  common,  nat- 
ural appetites,  tastes,  feelings,  hopes,  fears,  that  are  the  con- 
trolling motives  of  human  life,  are  right,  every  one  of  them. 
There  is  not  a  part  or  passion  that  is  not  in  its  intent  divine. 
There  needs  no  reversal  of  human  character.  There  needs 
no  uprooting  of  human  motives.  There  needs  no  "conver- 
sion," in  the  theological  sense.  These  motives, —  what  are 
they  ?  They  all  resolve  themselves  into  one  grand  hunger, — 
hunger  for  life;  for  more  life;  for  a  broader,  deeper,  higher 
life.  And,  if  there  be  nothing  but  that  hunger,  and  there 
be  along  with  it  a  growing  wisdom,  the  result  of  human 
experience,  there  needs  no  other  force  to  develop  this  world 
into  a  perfect  kingdom  of  God. 

There  is  no  gulf,  then,  such  as  I  referred  to  at  the  outset, 
between  human  nature  and  all  other  nature.  There  is  sim- 
ply,—  because  of  man's  being  left  to  choose  and  to  be  gov- 
erned by  his  own  reason  or  unreason,  by  his  wisdom  or  his 
ignorance, —  there  is  simply  a  liability  to  a  thousand  mistakes 
and  a  thousand  follies*.     Man  is  liable  to  pursue  some  course. 


yS  Beliefs  about  Mmt. 

thinking  it  leads  to  heaven,  only  to  find  that  it  ends  in  de- 
struction. He  is  liable  to  become  the  victim  of  some  abnor- 
mal appetite,  for  the  lack  of  a  wise,  powerful  self-control. 
He  is  apt  to  go  astray;  but,  in  order  to  produce  the  perfect 
result,  there  needs  only  wisdom,  direction,  self-control. 
There  needs  only  that  I  develop  an  ability  to  hold  myself  in 
check,  to  look  out  over  the  world  and  to  choose  this  or  that ; 
to  know  what  is  best,  and  fix  upon  that.  If  I  were  only 
wisely  selfish,  I  should  do  that  every  time. 

I  will  close  by  guarding  one  point.  Perhaps  you  will  say 
in  your  heart :  "  This  is  downright  selfishness.  There  is 
nothing  noble  here.  It  is  all  poor  and  mean."  But  consider 
for  a  moment.  I  had  occasion  not  long  ago  to  draw  the 
distinction  between  self-love,  between  the  motive  power  that 
impels  us  to  choose  that  which  we  regard  as  good  and  that 
which  goes  by  the  name  of  selfishness,  as  an  evil.  I  must 
draw  that  again  now.  If  I  am  free,  I  cannot  help  choosing 
that  which  I  regard  as  best  for  me,  under  the  circumstances 
and  at  the  time.  No  human  being  can  help  it.  The  motive 
impulse  must  spring  from  my  own  heart.  It  cannot  spring 
from  any  other.  If  I  see  a  person  suffering  and  reach  out 
my  hand  and  give  freely  of  my  own  money  to  assist,  still  it  is 
my  feeling  that  leads  me  to  do  it.  I  may  call  it  sympathy 
instead  of  self-love,  but  I  do  that  which  I  choose  to  do,  and  I 
can  do  no  other.  Now,  as  to  the  distinction  between  selfish- 
ness, as  an  evil,  and  this  principle  of  choosing  the  best,  of 
which  I  have  spoken.  Selfishness,  as  an  evil,  means  that  I 
am  willing  to  take  a  pleasure  or  an  advantage  at  the  cost  of 
the  welfare  of  somebody  else.  There  is  no  other  meaning 
to  the  selfishness  that  is  wrong  save  that.  The  man  who  is 
willing  to  become  richer,  to  become  more  powerful,  to  do 
anything  that  he  conceives  to  be  to  his  own  advantage,  and 
as  a  result  leaves  another  man  or  woman  lower  than  before, 


Motive  Forces.  79 

that  man  is  selfish.  And  right  there  is  the  heart  of  infamy 
in  human  conduct.  But  this  is  not  choosing  that  which  is 
best  for  yourself.  In  the  long  run,  human  experience  tells  us 
the  man  who  takes  advantage  of  the  weakness  of  somebody 
else  is  not  doing  the  best  for  himself.  He  is  injuring  him- 
self unspeakably  more  than  he  is  injuring  his  victim.  So, 
instead  of  contradicting  the  principle  that  I  have  outlined,  it 
only  tends  to  confirm  it. 

I  believe  then  that  the  forces,  the  powers,  that  are  at  work 
in  human  nature  to-day,  do  not  need  uprootal  or  change. 
They  only  need  instruction.  They  only  need  guidance,  self- 
control.  Then  out  of  the  present  chaos  and  disorder  will 
come  infinite  peace  ;  and  the  perfect  city  of  God,  instead  of 
coming  down  from  God  out  of  heaven,  will  begin  right  here 
in  the  dust  at  our  feet,  and  will  rise  stone  by  stone  until  its 
walls  are  complete,  and  its  domes  and  spires  are  lifted  into 
the  sunny  air,  and  all  its  streets  and  homes  are  filled  with 
the  happy  and  perfected  children  of  humanity,  who  are  the 
children  of  God. 


Note. —  In  my  main  discussion  above,  I  have  kept  myself  to  the  stand- 
point of  a  wise  self-love.  I  have  done  this  for  the  sake  of  clearness, 
and  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  this  force  alone  would  necessarily  lead  to 
what  we  call  unselfish  care  for  others.  I  wish  to  add  now  to  this  the 
statement  that  love,  sympathy,  and  even  heroic  self-devotion  to  others, 
are  just  as  natural  to  man  as  are  the  opposite  feelings. 


THE  LAW  OF  PROGRESS. 


On  consulting  the  dictionary  of  Dr.  Worcester  as  to  the 
meaning  of  the  word  "progress,"  I  found  that  he  gave  the 
following  definition  :  "  The  act  of  progressing  or  going  for- 
ward." But  this  did  not  help  me  a  great  deal,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  he  failed  to  define  what  was  meant  by  "going 
forward."  Which  way  is  forward,  when  we  are  talking  about 
the  movements  of  mankind  ?  Of  course,  any  particular  phi- 
losophy, religion,  nationality,  school  of  thought,  reform,  will 
hold  to  and  attempt  to  defend  the  belief  that  progress  is 
carrying  out  its  own  ideas,  advancing  along  the  line  of  its 
own  hopes  and  purposes.  But,  if  we  take  this  for  a  definition, 
we  shall  find  we  are  involved  at  once  in  inextricable  confu- 
sion and  helpless  contradiction.  Progress  for  the  woman 
suffragist  is  one  thing :  Dr.  Bushnell  calls  it  "  the  reform 
against  nature."  Progress  for  the  republican,  that  which  we 
glory  in,  is  looked  upon  as  decay,  disintegration,  disaster  for 
humanity,  from  the  stand-point  of  the  monarchist.  That 
which  we  call  religious  progress  is  scouted  as  evil  and 
destructive  to  man  by  those  who  hold  to  theories  of  super- 
naturalism.  Progress  for  the  American  on  this  continent, 
that  which  means  invading  the  wilderness,  taking  possession 
of  his  hunting  grounds,  is  looked  upon  by  the  Indian  as  the 
destruction  of  his  home  and  the  decay  of  all  which  he  regards 
as  valuable  in  life.  We  shall  have  to  go  further  than  this,  if 
we  wish  to  find  an  adequate  and  satisfactory  definition. 


The  Law  of  Progress.  8 1 

Herbert  Spencer,  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Bagehot,  says  it  is  "  an 
increase  of  adaptation  of  man  to  his  environment."  This 
may  be  adequate  and  accurate  as  far  it  goes ;  but  it  does  not 
go  far  enough  to  complete  the  circle.  Adaptation  to  a  man's 
environment  will  either  lift  him  up  or  degrade  him,  accord- 
ing to  whether  his  environment  is  higher  or  lower  than 
his  present  condition.  Take  a  man  already  in  declining 
health  and  transfer  him  to  a  region  infested  with  malaria, 
with  a  fever-stricken  atmosphere,  or  where  the  germs  of 
some  fatal  disease  lie  hidden,  and  then  produce  "  an  increas- 
ing adaptation  "  between  him  and  that  kind  of  environment, 
and  it  certainly  does  not  mean  progress  towards  physical 
vigor  or  increase  of  the  length  of  life.  It  means  rather 
decay,  or  progress  downward  toward  disease  and  death. 

In  spite,  however,  of  the  difficulty  that  we  find  at  the  out- 
set as  to  a  definition,  we  do  find  that  the  experience  of 
man  on  earth  has  somehow  brought  into  the  consciousness 
and  feeling  of  all  those  nations  that  claim  to  stand  at  the 
head,  supreme  in  power,  supreme  in  knowledge,  supreme  in 
happiness, —  we  do  find,  I  say,  practically  a  general  convic- 
tion that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  progress,  and  that  the  world, 
at  however  slow  a  pace,  is  advancing  toward  something  higher 
and  better.  The  creed  of  the  civilized  world  is  really  summed 
up  in  the  familiar  couplet  of  Tennyson  :  — 

"  Yet  I  doubt  not  through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process  of  the  suns." 

And  the  conviction  that  there  is  in  this,  which  men  call 
progress,  something  desirable,  finds  its  expression  in  another 
line  of  the  same  poet,  where  he  makes  the  speaker  say, — 

"  Better  fifty  years  of  Europe  than  a  cycle  of  Cathay." 

That  is,  a  man  may  live  more  in  a  few  years  spent  in  the 
midst  of  those  nations  which  we  call  civilized  and  progres- 


82  Beliefs  about  Man. 

sive  than  he  could  by  lengthening  out  to  almost  any  extent 
the  mere  fact  of  existence  among  those  that  are  stagnant  or 
decaying. 

We  shall  get  at  an  approximately  correct,  or  sufficiently 
correct,  conception  of  what  progress  means,  if  we,  however 
briefly,  glance  at  a  few  mental  pictures  of  some  contrasts 
between  those  nations  that  are  barbaric  and  those  that  we  call 
civilized.  If  we  look  first  at  the  differences  of  their  mere 
physical  conditions  and  surroundings,  we  see  barbaric  man 
a  wild,  naked  savage  in  the  woods  ;  at  first  without  fire,  with- 
out clothing,  save  that  which  he  strips  from  the  trees  or  robs 
from  the  backs  of  their  owners,  the  wild  beasts  of  the  forest; 
without  any  adequate  means  of  supplying  himself  with  food ; 
without  weapons  of  defence  against  the  wild  beasts  that  are 
about  him ;  standing  abjectly  fearful  and  helpless  in  the 
presence  of  the  great  elemental  forces  of  the  world ;  afraid 
of  the  lightning ;  afraid  of  the  dark  j  afraid  of  the  cold ; 
tormented  with  hunger ;  swept  off  by  pestilences  ;  helpless 
in  the  presence  of  these  great  formless  and  therefore  terrific 
powers,  that  he  thinks  of  as  beings  like  himself,  only  heart- 
less and  cruel.  Then  picture  civilized  man  with  an  average 
length  of  life  almost  double ;  with  unspeakably  more  means 
of  comfort ;  dwelling  in  houses  that  are  palaces  ;  surrounded 
with  everything  that  can  appeal  to  and  supply  the  wants  of 
his  nature ;  in  great  communities ;  in  growing  cities  with 
their  paved  highways  ;  with  the  means  of  communication 
which  he  has  developed, —  railroads,  telegraphs,  telephones, 
all  the  ten  thousand  appliances  of  the  civilized  world. 

Then,  when  you  leave  the  physical  condition  and  come  up 
to  the  mental,  what  an  expansion,  what  an  enlargement  of 
man  is  here !  A  larger  and  more  complex  brain ;  school- 
houses,  newspapers,  libraries,  art  galleries,  museums,  all 
those   institutions    that   correspond    to    and    represent  the 


The  Law  of  Progress.  83 

mental  development  of  the  world.  On  the  one  hand,  man, 
developed  into  such  a  godlike  power  over  the  problems  of 
the  universe  that,  as  if  he  were  a  very  god,  he  holds  the  sea 
in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  and  weighs  the  mountains  in  scales 
and  the  earth  in  a  balance.  He  takes  up  the  isles  as  though 
they  were  a  very  little  thing,  and  measures  the  orbits  of  the 
suns.  He  even  describes  accurately  their  bulk  and  composi- 
tion, and  weighs  the  planets  as  an  apothecary  weighs  his  tiny 
grains.  At  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  this  man,  unable  to 
count  perhaps  beyond  the  fingers  of  one  hand ;  with  a  brain 
smaller  than  that  of  the  civilized  man ;  with  little  power  of 
thought;  no  prevision  ;  staring  dumbly,  perchance,  at  the 
great  wonders  of  the  universe,  with  an  ox-like  impassibility, 
instead  of  that  reverent  awe  with  which  the  civilized  man 
faces  the  great  facts  that  are  everywhere  about  him. 

Then,  when  you  come  to  consider  the  differences  in  his 
moral  characteristics ;  when  you  look  over  the  world  and  see 
the  reformatories,  the  asylums,  the  hospitals,  that  represent 
the  tenderness  of  man  toward  the  unfortunate,  the  sick,  the 
poor ;  all  the  external  institutions  and  appliances  that  come 
under  that  one  grand  word  "benevolence," — a  word  utterly 
unknown  and  unthought  of,  when  man  was  at  the  outset  of 
his  career, —  you  become  assured  of  the  fact  that  there  has 
been  a  marvellous  change  ini  the  decrease  of  hate  and  the 
growth  of  love,  a  decrease  of  fear  and  a  growth  of  trust.  If  I 
had  time  to  analyze  only  these  two  facts,  thus  so  simply  stated, 
I  should  be  able  to  sum  up  in  them  the  entire  moral  progress 
of  the  world.  Man  has  learned  to  hate  less  and  love  more. 
He  has  learned  to  fear  less  and  to  trust  more.  These  two 
grand  facts,  like  a  double  rainbow,  span  the  whole  arch  that 
represents  the  moral  progress  of  man  from  the  lowest  to  the 
highest.  Man,  strong,  self-centred,  self-controlled,  able  to 
look  out  over  and  to  control  the  forces  of  the  world,  is  no 


84  Beliefs  about  Man. 

longer  afraid  of  them.  They  are  his  allies,  his  friends.  He 
is  no  longer  afraid  of  ferocious  wild  beasts  or  ferocious  wild 
men.  He  is  able  to  look  other  races  in  the  face,  and  discern 
the  fact  of  brotherhood.  So  hate  dies  out,  and  fear  dies  out ; 
and  trust, —  that  self-poised  calm  with  which  man  faces  the 
problems  of  the  civilized  world, —  and  love, —  that  bond  that 
binds  communities  and  nations  together  by  the  tender  tie  of 
sympathy,  that  makes  men  feel,  each  one  of  them,  "  I  am  a 
man,  and  nothing  that  is  human  is  indifferent  to  me," —  these 
rise  to  the  kingship  of  his  life.  These  facts  mark  man  as  a 
morally  progressive  being. 

It  needs  only  a  word  to  indicate  man's  religious  progress, 
from  the  day  when  he  stands  in  the  presence  of  hideous, 
cruel  gods,  as  he  deems  them,  surrounding  him  on  all  hands, 
that  he  must  propitiate  with  suffering  and  tears  and  blood,  to 
that  period  in  the  history  of  the  world  where  Jesus  utters 
the  thought  that  God  is  "  Our  Father,"  one  who  sends  his 
rain  equally  on  the  evil  and  the  good,  and  bids  his  sun  shine 
on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust.  From  that  time  to  this  —  for 
this  later  thought  is  only  as  yet  beginning  to  be  incorporated 
in  the  heart  and  life  of  man — there  is  a  stretch  of  religious 
progress  that  means  emancipation  and  help,  and  love  and 
peace,  and  endless  hope. 

The  New  York  Nation  said  two  or  three  years  ago  (I 
quote  from  memory,  not  verbally)  that  the  difference  between 
the  hut  of  the  barbarian  and  a  modern  lady's  drawing-room 
marked  the  entire  advance  of  human  civilization  \  and  if  you 
draw  mental  pictures  of  the  two,  and  see  what  is  implied  in 
the  contrast,  you  will  see  how  profound  is  this  generalization. 
All  the  contrasts  that  I  have  run  over  so  briefly  you  will  find 
indicated  in  this  one  phrase.  The  modern  woman,  cultured, 
refined,  developed,  surrounded  by  everything  that  can  appeal 
to  and  satisfy  her  wants,  physical,  mental,  moral,  spiritual, — 


The  Law  of  Progress.  85 

with  a  calm  facing  of  the  universe,  with  an  outlook  toward 
an  endless  future, — this  is  that  which  stands  for  what  we 
imply  when  we  talk  about  human  progress. 

Now  consider  for  just  a  moment  what  we  mean  by  the 
advantages  which  the  civilized  world  has  over  the  uncivilized. 
Take  for  instance  a  nation  like  England  or  like  the  United 
States,  not  by  any  means  ideally  perfect  as  yet,  but  in  which 
there  is  the  largest  development  of  physical  life,  of  freedom, 
of  intelligence,  of  self-culture,  of  mental  development,  of 
moral  advance.  What  is  the  advantage  such  a  nation  has 
over  a  barbaric  people?  In  the  first  place,  bring  them  to- 
gether on  the  field  of  battle,  and  the  civilized  shatters  the 
uncivilized  at  the  first  contact.  The  civilized  world  is  might- 
ier than  the  uncivilized.  The  modern  man  lives  longer.  He 
has  more  physical  comfort.  He  has  larger  development 
of  body  as  well  as  of  brain.  The  old  idea  that  men  are 
dwindling  and  becoming  puny  as  the  ages  go  on,  that  civili- 
zation dwarfs  the  individual,  is  only  a  curious  mistake.  I 
went  through  the  tower  of  London  a  year  and  a  half  ago, 
and  I  looked  at  the  armor  of  the  old  kings  and  the  famous 
heroes  of  English  history.  And  it  is  my  firm  conviction 
that,  although  I  am  not  a  very  large  man,  there  was  hardly 
a  suit  of  armor  there  that  I  could  possibly  have  worn. 

In  short,  then,  the  civilized  man  lives  longer,  and  he  lives 
more.  He  is  stronger,  and  comes  out  ahead  in  all  contests, 
be  they  physical,  mental,  or  moral.  His  larger  internal 
development  calls  for  and  creates  corresponding  external 
conditions.  Thus,  all  that  we  mean  by  governments,  socie- 
ties, arts,  sciences,  literatures,  come  into  being.  The  general 
result  is  an  infinitely  richer  and  more  complex  world,  and  an 
infinitely  finer,  higher,  and  completer  man,  to  inhabit,  to 
enjoy,  and  still  further  to  develop  it. 

Then  there  is  this  mental  superiority,  this  ability  to  lock 


86  Beliefs  about  Man. 

out  over  the  world  and  control  its  forces,  and  thus  anticipate 
the  future.  There  is  an  increase  of  enjoyment.  There  is 
an  increase  of  everything  that  the  human  heart  naturally 
desires.  Now  let  us  see  if  we  can  get  at  the  heart  of  this. 
Let  us  see  what  it  means. 

What  is  progress  ?  Progress  is  nothing  else  than  growth. 
In  scientific  phrase,  it  is  an  "  advance  from  the  homogeneous 
to  the  heterogeneous."  In  plain  language,  it  is  an  advance 
from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  less  to  the  more. 
Let  us  take  the  case  of  a  plant  or  flower,  and  I  will  illus- 
trate, without  leading  you  astray,  precisely  what  I  mean. 

You  hold  a  little  seed  in  your  hand.  It  is  very  small,  but 
you  know  that  wrapped  up  in  there  is  a  capacity  for  what  you 
call  growth,  unfolding,  development.  It  needs  only  appro- 
priate conditions, —  soil,  sunshine,  rain,  air,  room.  Give  it 
these,  and  there  comes  up  first  a  tiny  little  blade  through  the 
soil :  this  divides  into  two ;  it  grows ;  it  branches ;  it  throws 
out  twigs  on  every  side  ;  leaves  burst  forth  ;  then  it  flowers ; 
and  at  last  it  crowns  itself  with  fruitage  that  holds  in  its  heart 
the  seeds  of  other  and  endless  new  developments.  This  is 
what  we  mean  by  progress  in  plant  life,  the  fact  of  growth. 

There  is,  however,  another  side  to  it.  What  do  we  mean 
when  we  speak  of  the  development  of  all  the  apples  of  earth 
from  the  crab-apple ;  when  we  hear  of  the  new  and  finer 
developments  of  pear  or  grape.'*  What  does  the  horticult- 
urist mean  when  he  talks  about  producing  a  finer  rose  than 
was  ever  seen  before?  He  means  the  development  of  some 
one  kind  until  it  becomes  more  than  it  ever  was  before  in  all 
the  qualities  that  compose  it.  It  has  more  leaves, —  doubled, 
tripled,  quadrupled !  it  has  more  color,  a  deepening  of  the 
tints  or  a  larger  variety  of  tinting;  more  fragrance,  and  a 
finer  quality  of  fragrance.  And  a  precisely  similar  thing  is 
what  we  mean  by  human  progress.     The  lowest  type  of  man 


The  Law  of  Progress.  Sy 

who  stood  on  the  farthest  border  that  separates  manhood 
from  the  animal  world  was  the  seed,  holding  in  himself  "  the 
promise  and  the  potency"  of  all  that  the  world  has  become. 

It  needs  then  for  progress  these  two  things, —  an  innate 
capacity  for  unfolding;  then  soil,  sunshine,  rain,  room  for 
development. 

Now  let  me  raise  the  question  whether  there  is  any  neces- 
sary law  of  human  progress.  It  is  a  strange  question  when 
you  come  to  analyze  it ;  and  it  seems  to  me  a  little  curious 
that  there  should  be  so  much  confusion  of  thought  in  regard 
to  it.     Is  there  any  necessity  for  human  progress  ? 

Yes  and  no. 

There  is  a  necessity  for  the  progress  of  the  race.  There 
is  no  necessity  for  the  progress  of  any  one  nation  or  of  any 
one  individual.  The  whole  matter  will  be  made  perfectly 
clear,  if  you  will  let  me  recur  to  the  illustration  of-  the  flower. 
There  are  so  many  conditions  that  are  favorable  to  plant  life 
in  this  world,  and  so  many  seeds,  that  we  say  it  is  a  practical 
necessity  that  there  should  be  plant  life,  and  that  it  should 
develop  and  unfold  itself  more  and  more.  But  there  is  no 
necessity  for  any  particular  plant  or  flower  to  unfold,  or  for 
any  particular  variety  to  continue  to  live. 

There  are  then  two  things  necessary :  the  seed,  the  innate 
tendency  to  germinate  and  develop ;  and  the  conditions  for 
development, —  the  soil,  sunshine,  rain.  You  may  have  the 
one  without  the  other ;  but  unless  you  have  both  there  can 
be  no  development. 

I  believe  then  that,  in  the  words  of  Pascal,  one  of  the 
greatest  thinkers  of  the  world,  we  are  to  think  of  "  the  entire 
succession  of  men  through  the  whole  course  of  ages  "  as 
being  substantially  "  one  man,  always  living  and  incessantly 
learning."  The  race  must  live,  the  race  must  go  on. 
Necessity  compels  it.     It  is  progress,  or  die.     For  Nature, 


SS  Beliefs  about  Man. 

with  her  great  problems,  stands  ever,  like  the  ancient  fabled 
sphinx,  beside  the  pathway  of  human  life,  propounding  her 
riddles  to  man.  If  he  answers  them,  there  is  the  reward  of  a 
larger  life.     If  not,  he  is  mercilessly  devoured. 

Man  can  solve  the  problems  of  life,  and  he  must ;  and  this 
constitutes  progress.  This  is  true  of  man,  considered  as  the 
entire  race.  In  spite  of  what  brilliant  writers  and  speakers 
may  tell  us  of  "  lost  arts,"  I  do  not  believe  there  are  any  lost 
arts  of  great  value.  I  believe  that  Emerson  was  truer  in  his 
thought,  when  he  said, 

"  One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost." 

I  do  not  believe  that  the  advancing  march  of  man  has  ever 
dropped  in  the  roadwa}^,  trampled  down,  and  left  behind  any- 
thing really  essential  to  its  farther  advancement.  Mankind 
has  not  progressed  with  equal  stejD  through  all  the  ages. 
There  are  periods,  whole  ages,  when  it  seems  to  be  standing 
still.  We  know  that  some  of  the  greatest  inventions,  those 
that  have  revolutionized  the  world, — gunpowder,  printing, 
steam, —  were  dropped  in  the  soil  of  nations  thousands  of 
years  ago  ;  but  the  conditions  of  their  growth  were  not  there, 
and  so  they  came  to  nothing. 

Neither  are  we  to  consider  that  the  human  race  is  really 
making  no  progress,  because  it  seems  to  be  standing  still. 
Did  you  ever  look  upon  the  growth  of  a  century-plant  ? 
Week  after  week,  month  after  month,  and  year  after  year,  it 
seems  practically  to  be  almost  standing  still.  But  it  is  all 
the  time  gathering  force,  gathering  increment  of  power  and 
life  and  material  in  its  broad,  thick  leaves  \  and  at  the  last, 
when  the  years  have  gone  by  and  the  time  is  ripe,  in  a  few 
days  it  shoots  up  its  stalk,  and  in  a  few  hours  blossoms  into 
marvellous  beauty.  And  so  the  human  race  seems  some- 
times to  have  come  to  a  halt.     Yet  in  these  silent,  mighty 


The  Law  of  Progress.  89 

ages  when  everything  seems  asleep,  when  literature  is  dis- 
couraged, and  religion  feels  that  the  world  is  going  to  decay, 
it  is  only  gathering  forces,  which  by  and  by  shall  reveal 
themselves  in  a  grand  advance,  some  mighty  enlargement  of 
human  life,  opportunity,  intelligence,  and  power. 

There  is  then,  I  say,  this  necessity  for  the  advance  of  the 
race  as  a  whole ;  but  there  is  no  necessity  for  the  advance  of 
any  particular  nation,  or  any  particular  man.  The  whole 
question  turns  upon  whether  the  conditions  of  progress  are 
complied  with  by  the  nation  or  the  man. 

Now,  what  is  the  force  that  lies  at  the  heart  of  humanity, 
that  constitutes  the  eternal  impetus  toward  progress  ?  What 
is  the  power  —  to  use  that  illustration  again,  that  is  so  fitting 
that  it  will  follow  me  all  through  the  morning  —  at  the  heart 
of  the  seed,  the  tendency,  that  no  man  can  explain,  to  burst 
its  enclosure  and  grow  ?  As  at  the  heart  of  the  seed,  so  at 
the  heart  of  man  there  is  an  endless  thirst,  a  deathless 
hunger  to  become  more,  to  reach  out  on  every  side ;  and,  as 
the  plant,  for  the  water  supply  that  is  far  away,  will  send 
down  and  out  its  rootlets,  hunting  for  it  with  almost  a  human 
intelligence  through  the  dark  pathways  of  the  soil ;  or  as  the 
plant  in  a  cellar  or  under  a  stone  will  reach  out  and  seek  for 
the  tiniest  ray  of  light  that  may  come  through  some  crevice ; 
or  will  attempt  to  heave  off  and  tumble  down  the  obstruc- 
tion that  hinders  its  rise, — so  ever  in  the  case  of  humanity. 
There  is  a  mental,  spiritual  hunger  and  thirst  in  man  to  be- 
come more  than  he  is,  he  hardly  knows  how  or  why.  He 
reaches  out  after  those  things  that  he  desires,  and  thirsts  for 
the  satisfaction  of  every  appetite.  It  makes  no  difference 
whether  or  not  you  can  prove  that  there  is  any  practical 
result  to  come  from  this  deathless  pursuit.  A  man  does  not 
reason  when  he  is  hungry.  He  is  simply  hungry,  and  he 
stretches  out  his  hand  for  food.     So  you  may  prove  ever  so 


QO  Beliefs  about  Man. 

conclusively  to  the  navigators  and  investigators  and  dis- 
coverers of  the  world  that  there  would  be  no  practical  use 
ever  subserved  by  mapping  out  the  interior  of  Africa.  But 
they  will  go  on  until  every  part  of  that  land,  till  every  bit  of 
this  round  world,  is  as  familiar  as  are  the  streets  of  Boston. 
In  spite  of  wreck,  disaster,  and  tragedy,  over  and  over  again, 
they  will  continue  to  knock  at  that  icy  gateway  of  the  north, 
until  the  flag  of  some  nation  is  hoisted  on  the  pole.  There 
is  a  deathless  thirst  in  man  to  engage  all  his  faculties,  to 
accomplish  all  that  is  possible,  to  achieve  all  that  his  hand 
can  grasp. 

There  are  wise  philosophies,  there  are  religions,  that  tell 
man  he  is  all  wrong  in  this  incessant  hungering  and  thirsting 
for  what  they  declare  to  be  impossible  ;  that  the  true  way  to 
find  peace  and  contentment  is  by  repression.  As  though 
you  were  to  go  to  a  horticulturist  and  tell  him  the  true  way 
to  get  the  perfect  flower  is  by  repression, —  not  to  give  quite 
enough  soil  or  sunshine,  to  clip  off  the  aspiring  leaves  and 
twigs,  to  hold  it  back  and  down !  But  he  will  tell  you  that 
the  true  way  is  to  give  every  one  unlimited  opportunity,  then 
to  select  and  cultivate  the  best.  So,  though  men  tell  us  that 
the  true  way  to  find  heaven  is  to  crush  out  and  repress  all 
the  natural  human  tendencies  of  men,  though  they  tell  us 
that  peace  can  only  be  found  in  their  extinction,  yet  I  believe 
that  Tennyson  has  rung  out  the  truer  note  and  the  healthier 

creed, — 

"  Whatever  crazy  sorrow  saith, 
No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 
Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death. 
'Tis  life,  of  which  our  nerves  are  scant, 
O  life,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant, 
More  life  and  fuller  that  we  want." 

And  just  here,  as  illustrating  the  true  nature  of  man  and 
how  to  treat  him  as  a  help  toward  progress,  I  will  read  to 


TJie  Laiv  of  Progress.  91 

you  a  paragraph  from  a  paper  by  Prof.  William  James,  the 
brother  of  the  novelist  whom  you  all  know  so  well. 

"  Man's  chief  difference  from  the  brute  lies  in  the  exuber- 
ant excess  of  his  subjective  propensities,  his  pre-eminence 
over  them  simply  and  solely  in  the  number  and  in  the  fan- 
tastic and  unnecessary  character  of  his  wants,  physical, 
moral,  aesthetic,  and  intellectual.  Had  his  whole  life  not 
been  a  quest  for  the  superfluous,  he  would  never  have  estab- 
lished himself  as  inexpugnably  as  he  has  done  in  the  neces- 
sary. And,  from  the  consciousness  of  this,  he  should  draw 
the  lesson  that  his  wants  are  to  be  trusted ;  that,  even  when 
their  gratification  seems  farthest  off,  the  uneasiness  they  occa- 
sion is  still  the  best  guide  of  his  life,  and  will  lead  him  to 
issues  entirely  beyond  his  present  powers  of  reckoning. 
Prune  down  his  extravagance,  sober  him,  and  you  undo  him." 

Progress  means  trusting  human  hunger  of  every  kind  and 
in  every  direction,  and  opening  wide  the  field  for  all  human 
experiment.  This  hunger  of  man,  this  tendency  to  develop 
being  given,  he  only  needs  intelligent  guidance  and  oppor- 
tunit}'-,  and  progress  naturally  follows.  Anything,  however, 
which  obstructs  his  way  or  turns  him  aside  into  some  false 
path,  will  result  in  stagnation  or  decay.  The  problem  for 
him  to  solve  is  this, —  to  learn  the  real  nature  of  the  forces 
with  which  he  has  to  deal,  and  then  how  to  make  them  friends, 
helpers  to  his  growing  life.  This  implies  both  self-develop- 
ment and  control  of  the  external  world. 

Two  main  dangers  threaten  him :  first,  that  some  false  or 
imperfect  theory  of  the  universe  —  scientific,  philosophic,  or 
religious  —  may  lead  him  astray;  and,  second,  that  some  tyr- 
anny, external,  as  of  a  chief,  a  political  organization,  a  king, 
or  internal,  as  of  a  system  of  thought  or  a  religious  fear, 
may  stand  in  the  way  and  hinder  his  advance. 

I  have  time  left   only  for  a  few  specimen  illustrations  of 


92  Beliefs  about  Man. 

what  seem  to  me  the  conditions  and  the  line  of  human  prog- 
ress. If  you  place  yourself  in  the  condition  of  early  man, 
you  will  find  that  the  first  step  that' he  needed  to  take  was  to 
learn  how  to  combine.  One  man  alone  is  helpless.  Men 
organized  and  co-operating  sympathetically  together  are  able 
to  subdue  the  earth.  It  is  as  when  a  party  of  adventurous 
climbers  wish  to  explore  the  summits  of  the  Alps  ;  they  dare 
not  risk  this  alone  ;  nor  do  they  simply  make  up  a  party, 
each  walking  by  himself.  But  they  tie  themselves  together, 
so  that  the  weak  may  be  helped  by  the  strong ;  so  that  he 
who  stands  on  the  edge  of  imminent  peril  may  be  drawn 
back  to  a  place  of  safety ;  so  that  all  may  go  up  or  down 
together.  A  bundle  of  rods,  as  we  have  learned  from  the  old 
fable,  is  always  stronger  than  a  single  rod  \  and  it  does  not 
matter  either  what  kind  of  a  cord  it  is  that  binds  them  to- 
gether. The  first  problem,  then,  was  the  art  of  combination. 
The  union  might  be  compelled  by  the  hand  of  a  ruthless 
despot  or  a  merciless  chief.  It  might  have  been  the  fiction 
of  a  common  ancestor,  untrue  in  fact,  but  mighty  as  an  idea. 
It  might  have  been  the  possession  of  a  common  worship ; 
and,  so  far  as  this  is  concerned,  it  made  no  difference  whether 
the  God  were  good  or  bad,  merciful  or  cruel.  The  body  of 
men  who  came  together  and  were  held  together  by  some 
common  bond  was  mightier  than  a  thousand  fragments  of 
tribes,  where  each  one  was  for  himself:  just  as  the  phalanx 
of  Alexander,  few  in  number,  but  elbow  to  elbow  and 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  foot  by  foot,  marched  through  the 
myriad  Asiatics  who  were  not  thus  combined.  The  first 
step,  then,  was  the  finding  some  common  bond. 

Then  what  ?  Here  came  in  that  danger  to  which  man- 
kind is  perpetually  exposed, —  the  danger  of  learning  to  love 
and  worship  something  that  once  was  helpful,  after  its  uses 
are  all  outgrown.     So   a  nation  comes    to  worship  its   des- 


The  Law  of  Progress.  93 

potism  or  monarch,  or  the  family  of  the  man  that  first  made 
it  illustrious.  Thus  it  perpetuates  the  despotism  until  it  be- 
comes an  incubus.  So,  in  after  years,  men  come  to  reverence 
the  religion  which  was  their  first  bond,  in  such  a  fashion  that 
it  stands  squarely  in  the  way  of  their  taking  a  farther  step  of 
progress.  They  bow  in  blind  reverence  to  that  which  was 
once  useful,  though  now  it  be  outgrown  :  as  though  a  child, 
learning  to  walk  by  the  aid  of  its  baby-jumper,  should  come 
at  last  to  estimate  the  service  it  once  rendered  him  so  highly, 
come  to  love  it  so  warmly,  come  to  reverence  or  fear  it  so 
strangely  as  not  to  dare  to  change  it,  and  thus  limit  the  entire 
development  of  his  life  to  the  capability  of  his  baby-jumper. 

This  is  what  men  are  constantly  doing.  They  do  it  so- 
cially, politically,  morally,  religiously.  Something  aided  them 
once,  and  they  will  keep  it  forever.  They  dare  not  go  be- 
yond it.    Forgetting  the  principle,  they  only  stick  in  the  form. 

What  each  man  needs  is  to  regard  the  fact  of  being  bound 
together,  not  the  instrument  that  binds.  Revere  government, 
not  a  despotism,  not  any  particular  form  of  dynasty.  Wor- 
ship religion,  not  a  religion.  The  problem  of  progress  will 
be  found  in  the  case  of  man,  just  as  in  the  case  of  a  tree, 
when  there  is  cohesive  power  enough  to  hold  together  and 
expansive  freedom  enough  to  permit  growth.  What  man 
needs  in  politics,  art,  science,  religion,  everywhere,  is  to  learn 
to  love  and  worship  and  care  for  this  principle  of  co-opera- 
tion, so  that  men  can  combine,  but  to  hold  it  loosely  enough 
so  that  there  can  be  growth. 

The  principles  already  advanced  contain  by  implication 
that  which  I  shall  make  my  next  step,  in  the  illustration  of 
this  great  theme.  The  progress  of  man  on  earth  has  kept 
pace,  step  by  step  from  the  beginning  until  now,  with  the 
decay  of  supernaturalism.  What  does  this  mean  ?  It  means 
simply  this  :  that  supernaturalism,  in  all  its  forms,  is  false,  as 


94  Beliefs  about  Man. 

a  theory  of  the  universe  ;  and  that  man  progresses  only  along 
the  lines  of  a  true  theory.  As  I  have  already  said,  the  condi- 
tions of  progress  are  that  men  shall  learn  the  real  nature  of 
the  forces  at  work  in  the  world  and  with  which  he  has  to 
deal ;  for  only  thus  can  he  learn  how  to  deal  with  them  so 
as  to  make  them  his  servants.  Take  two  or  three  specimen 
illustrations. 

So  long  as  men  believed  that  it  rested  on  the  will  of  a 
supernatural  power  as  to  whether  they  should  be  supplied 
with  food  or  not,  rather  than  on  a  correct  understanding  of 
the  laws  of  agriculture,  just  so  long  they  were  liable  to  wast- 
ing famines,  that  devastated  whole  districts  and  nations. 
Famine  was  looked  on  as  the  judgment  of  a  god  ;  but  the 
gods  ceased  to  punish  men  by  famine,  when  they  learned  the 
conditions  of  good  harvests,  when  they  learned  to  store  pro- 
visions, and  to  establish  means  of  communication,  one  nation 
with  another,  so  that  the  supply,  which  is  always  a  surplus 
somewhere,  may  flow  to  the  place  where  it  is  needed. 

There  was  no  progress  in  medicine,  so  long  as  disease  was 
regarded  as  the  infliction  of  an  angry  deity,  to  be  cured  with 
prayers,  amulets,  sacrifices,  and  charms.  When  men  began 
to  learn  that  health  and  disease  depend  on  natural  and  con- 
trollable forces,  then  they  began  to  study  those  forces,  so  as 
to  have  some  little  power  in  the  way  of  prevention  and  cure. 
Medicine,  to  be  sure,  has  not  made  any  very  great  progress 
yet ;  but  every  step  it  has  made  has  been  away  from  super- 
naturalism  toward  an  appreciation  of  the  laws  of  nature. 

And  so,  in  government,  no  progress  toward  freedom, 
toward  the  real  development  of  man,  has  ever  been  made, 
except  away  from  the  idea  of  the  divine  right  toward  the 
human  right.  Those  governments  that  have  claimed  to  be 
theocracies,  or  where  the  kings  or  the  ruling  force  pretended 
to  be  the  arm  and  expression  of  the  will  of  God,  have  in  all 


The  Law  of  Progress,  95 

ages  been  the  worst  governments  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
It  is  only  as  human  equity  and  human  rights  have  come  to 
be  recognized,  that  the  world  has  grown  merciful,  just,  and 
kind. 

So  long  as  men  believed  that  earthquakes  were  visitations 
of  God,  of  course  it  did  not  make  any  difference  whether 
they  lived  in  one  part  of  the  world  or  another,  or  whether 
they  built  one  kind  of  structure  or  another.  There  was  no 
use  in  conforming  to  natural  laws,  since  the  gods  could  do 
as  they  pleased. 

So  you  will  find,  in  every  department  of  life,  that  progress 
has  been  away  from  the  supernatural  toward  the  natural. 
This  only  means  that  man  has  been  looking  in  the  wrong 
direction  for  God. 

"  Waiting  for  storms  and  whirlwinds, 
And  to  see  a  sign  appear, 
We  deem  not  God  is  speaking  in 
The  still,  small  voice  we  hear." 

So  long  as  he  looks  in  the  wrong  direction,  he  does  not  find 
him.  We  find  God,  who  is  the  heart  and  life  of  all  men, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  in  his  laws  of  the  world.  And  this 
is  that  naturalism  which  is  not  atheism,  which  is  not  agnosti- 
cism, which  is  not  a  going  away  from  religion  and  the  divine, 
but  which  really  discovers  it,  and  is  thus  the  real  finding  and 
the  real  worship  of  God. 

But  yet,  while  it  is  not  wise  to  hug  our  mistakes  forever,  it 
was  perfectly  natural  that  man  should  make  this  mistake  at 
first.  For  human  progress,  in  all  departments  of  thought 
and  life,  necessarily  leads  through  three  different  phases.  At 
first,  man  looks  out  over  the  universe,  or  that  little  part  that 
is  accessible  to  him,  and  observes  what  he  supposes  to  be 
facts.     He  philosophizes  and  reasons  about  them  to  the  best 


96  Beliefs  about  Man. 

of  his  ability :  with  the  light  he  has,  he  explains  them  after  a 
certain  way.  And  this  is  what  is  called,  in  scientific  phrase,  a 
hypothesis.  By  and  by,  he  accumulates  a  thousand  facts  that 
his  first  explanation  will  not  explain ;  and  he  finds  that  his 
original  hypothesis  was  wrong.  As  years  go  by,  he  discovers 
so  many  new  facts  that  his  old  hypothesis  cannot  account  for 
that  his  first  explanation  has  to  be  given  up  entirely.  His 
theory  is  shattered,  and  he  is  all  afloat  without  any  rational 
conception  of  things.  When  passing  through  one  of  these 
transitional  phases,  men  know  not  what  to  believe :  doctors 
are  contradicting  each  other  at  every  turn  ;  and  people  look 
about  hopelessly  for  something  fixed,  some  place  of  rest. 
(We  are  passing  through  such  a  transition  in  the  department 
of  religion  to-day.)  After  enough  facts  have  been  gathered, 
there  comes  a  true  explanation  which  finds  a  place  for  them 
all,  a  stable  ground  on  which  to  stand  with  a  possibility  of 
endless  unfolding  and  development. 

Precisely  this  process  has  been  gone  through  with  in  re- 
gard to  man's  thought  about  the  universe.  First,  the  Ptole- 
maic system  was  adopted  :  the  world  was  the  centre  around 
which  the  stars  revolved.  Men  reasoned  as  well  as  they 
could  with  the  facts  at  hand.  But  by  and  by  there  came  an 
accumulation  of  facts  that  this  theory  could  not  explain,  and 
it  had  to  be  given  up.  Then  there  were  years  of  transition, — 
a  time  when  a  new  conception  was  coming  in ;  and  at  last  we 
have  the  Copernican  theory,  which  is  able  to  find  a  place  for 
every  sun  and  every  system,  every  galaxy,  every  wandering 
comet,  every  asteroid,  every  star.  We  need  not  change  it 
again ;  for,  if  we  go  on  to  study  till  we  have  ranged  the  whole 
sidereal  universe,  it  will  go  with  us  and  give  us  a  framework 
for  our  facts  forever. 

Precisely  these  steps  man  has  to  take  in  religion,  in 
science,  in  philosophy,  in  art,  in  every  department  of  human 
thought. 


The  Law  of  Progress.  97 

In  conclusion,  then,  the  conditions  of  progress  are  :  first, 
this  universal  hunger,  this  tendency  to  grow  ;  then  the  feed- 
ing of  this  hunger  with  truth,  and  the  giving  unlimited  oppor- 
tunity, room,  and  range,  for  endless  expansion. 

We  have  then  to  lay  special  emphasis,  as  absolute  con- 
ditions of  progress,  on  two  things, — freedom  and  knowledge. 
The  tendency  is  here,  deathless.  It  only  wants  room  to  ex- 
pand, and  guidance  in  that  expansion,  that  it  may  develop  in 
accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  universe,  which  are  the  laws 
of  God. 

To  sum  it  all  up,  then,  in  another  fragment  of  Tennyson  :  — 

"  Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to  more, 
And  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell ; 
That  mind  and  soul,  according  well, 

May  make  one  music  as  before, 

But  vaster." 


THE  EARTHLY  OUTLOOK. 


No  POET  of  the  modern  world  has  so  written  himself  into 
the  struggles,  the  problems,  and  the  achievements  of  civiliza- 
tion as  has  Tennyson.  Keeping  this  fact  in  mind,  it  will  not 
seem  strange  to  you  if  I  refer  to  him  once  and  again  by  way 
of  illustration  of  these  great  themes.  And  so  I  shall  begin 
this  morning  by  reading  to  you  two  or  three  stanzas  from 
the  opening  of  his  poem  called  "  Locksley  Hall "  :  — 

Here  about  the  beach  I  wander'd,  nourishing  a  youth  sublime 
With  the  fairy  tales  of  science,  and  the  long  result  of  Time ; 

When  the  centuries  behind  me  like  a  fruitful  land  reposed  ; 
When  I  clung  to  all  the  present  for  the  promise  that  it  closed  ; 

When  I  dipt  into  the  future  far  as  human  eye  could  see  ; 

Saw  the  Vision  of  the  world,  and  all  the  wonder  that  would  be. 

We  have  spent  six  Sunday  mornings  in  looking  over  the 
past  and  considering  in  their  broad  outlines  some  of  the 
facts  and  promises  of  the  present.  This  morning  and  next 
Sunday  morning,  we  are  to  dip  into  the  future  "  far  as  human 
eye  can  see,"  and  try  to  discern  the  "vision  of  the  world, 
and  all  the  wonder  "  that  will  be.  We  confine  ourselves  to- 
day to  the  earthly  outlook.  Next  Sunday,  we  will  consider 
the  question  of  man's  outlook  for  the  future  beyond  the  pres- 
ent life. 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  99 

Whether  a  man  shall  take  a  hopeful  view  of  the  present 
and  of  the  future  will  depend  very  largely  upon  his  tempera- 
ment, the  circumstances  of  his  past  life,  or  perhaps  only 
upon  his  passing  mood.  We  all  pass  through  hours  of  de- 
pression, when  the  good  of  our  life,  if  we  can  be  cheery 
enough  to  confess  that  there  has  been  any,  seems  to  belong 
to  the  past,  and  we  have  very  little  hope  of  the  future.  In 
another  mood,  however,  when  the  blood  runs  briskly  through 
the  veins,  the  heart  beats  vigorously,  and  we  are  thrilled  with 
the  sense  of  life  and  power,  all  the  past,  however  good  it 
may  have  been,  seems  to  us  very  poor  in  comparison  with 
those  achievements  which  we  dream  of  in  the  days  and 
years  that  are  to  come.  And,  as  this  is  true  of  the  indi- 
vidual, so  precisely  is  it  true  of  tribes,  of  nations,  of  races. 
There  are  periods  in  the  life  of  this  race  or  that,  when  all  the 
good  of  the  world  seems  to  be  behind  them  ;  and  they  fancy 
themselves  as  having  come  down  into  the  low,  barren  levels 
of  the  world,  with  only  dreariness  before  them  and  a  gulf 
of  catastrophe  at  the  end.  In  another  mood  of  mind,  some 
other  nation,  or  perhaps  this  same  race,  may  have  felt  the 
vigor  of  achievement  and  the  possibility  of  good  that  it  could 
accomplish,  and  has  stood  looking  forward,  with  eyes  raised, 
with  eager  face,  and  thought  bent  on  the  fair  skies  of  the 
future,  on  the  outlines  of  the  great  civilization  which  it  felt 
that  it  had  the  power  some  day  to  bring  out  of  the  region  of 
dreamland  and  build  on  the  solid  ground  of  fact.  Some- 
times, we  find  that  these  two  lines  of  thought,  the  backward- 
looking  and  the  onward-looking,  have  run  parallel  to  each 
other  within  the  limit  of  the  same  national  consciousness. 
For  example,  suppose  we  go  to  the  ancient  Greeks,  and  ask 
what  they  thought  in  regard  to  the  past  and  future  of  the 
world.  We  should  find  in  answer  two  lines  of  tradition. 
In  the  first  place,  bound  up  with  that  famous  old  Prometheus 


lOO  Beliefs  about  Man. 

myth,  we  find  the  Grecian  poets  and  writers  speaking  of  the 
time  in  the  distant  past  when  man  was  weak,  helpless,  ab- 
ject, a  pitiable  being  leading  a  pitiable  existence,  weak  in 
himself  and  despicable  in  the  eyes  of  the  happy  Olympians. 
Pitying  their  condition,  Prometheus  steals  the  sacred  fire  of 
the  gods  from  heaven,  and  bestows  it  upon  man  as  a  precious 
boon  ;  and  out  of  this  and  the  power  that  it  gives  him  to  meet 
and  shape  civilization  was  born  all  the  grand  things  that  he 
has  achieved  and  all  that  he  hopes  to  attain  in  the  future. 
Running  right  along  side  by  side  with  this  Prometheus  myth, 
we  find  another  way  of  looking  at  the  world.  Other  poets, 
orators,  religionists,  tell  us  that  the  world  began  with  a 
golden  age ;  when  the  gods  themselves  reigned  and  lived 
on  earth  in  familiar  intercourse  with  man ;  before  there  was 
any  war,  any  sickness,  any  disease,  any  trace  of  the  poor 
condition  into  which  the  world  has  fallen.  This  golden  age 
was  succeeded  by  the  silver  age,  that  by  the  age  of  bronze, 
each  one  poorer  and  lower  than  the  preceding,  until  after 
the  intercalation  of  the  heroic  period,  that  for  a  little  time 
recalled  the  glorious  dreams  of  the  past,  there  came  the 
present  age  of  iron,  an  age  that  is  hard,  hopeless,  poor,  in 
which  men  are  afflicted,  in  which  there  are  war  and  disorder 
and  turmoil,  and  men  look  forward  only  to  catastrophe  at 
the  end.  We  find  these  two  myths,  these  two  ways  of  look- 
ing at  the  world,  running  parallel  with  each  other  inside  the 
mental  consciousness  of  Greece. 

We  find  a  similar  thing  among  the  Hebrews.  Israel,  like 
Greece,  at  first  looked  back  to  the  far  past,  regarding  them- 
selves as  a  body  of  slaves  in  Egypt,  then  escaping  and  wan- 
dering for  years  in  the  wilderness,  at  last  conquering  for 
themselves  a  home  in  Palestine,  then  rising  higher  and 
higher  to  the  heroic  period  of  David.  Afterward  come  the 
prophets,  who  do  not  speak  at  first  of  the  golden  past.     They 


TJie  Earthly  Outlook.  lOi 

sing  of  a  period  of  millennial  glory  in  the  future,  when  the 
evils  of  the  world  will  have  been  left  behind.  Later  than 
this  prophetic  outburst,  we  find  for  the  first  time  in  the 
words  of  Ezekiel,  borrowed  by  him,  and  through  him  and 
the  men  of  his  time,  introduced  into  the  thought  and  relig- 
ious life  of  Palestine,  this  contrary  dream  of  the  world,  this 
picture  of  Eden,  and  the  belief  that  man  started  out  perfect 
and  complete,  and  has  fallen  from  that  state  into  his  present 
miserable  and  low  condition. 

We  find  then,  I  say,  these  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  world; 
but,  in  the  main,  Christianity,  that  stream  of  tradition  to  which 
we  belong,  of  which  we  are  a  part,  has  inherited  this  latter 
view  of  the  universe.  It  has  been  wrought  in  with  the  very 
fibre  of  its  theology  and  its  scheme  of  salvation,  that  the  world 
started  on  the  verge  of  heaven  and  is  sliding  down  to  the 
verge  of  the  abyss. 

What  are  the  facts  of  the  case  ?  Leaving  tradition  aside 
and  studying  the  past  of  man  as  carefully  as  we  may  along 
the  lines  of  his  old  development  up  to  his  present  condi- 
tion, to  what  may  we  expect  him  to  come,  and  what  achieve 
in  the  future  ?  Instead  of  being  the  inhabitants  of  a  world 
that  is  old,  weary,  worn  out,  and  ready  to  go  to  sleep,  we  are 
the  inhabitants  of  a  world  young,  fresh,  with  the  kindling 
fire  of  youth  in  its  eyes  and  the  growing  vigor  of  manhood 
in  its  arm.  The  shadows  of  wrong  and  sin,  the  pain  of  dis- 
ease and  suffering, —  all  these  shadows  that  now  and  again 
darken  the  thresholds  of  our  homes, —  these  are  not  the 
gathering  twilight  of  evening :  they  are  rather  the  remaining 
unlifted  shadows  of  the  dawn.  The  world  is  in  its  fresh, 
first  morning.  The  sun  indeed  is  up.  His  light  has  gilded 
the  summits  of  the  higher  mountain  peaks  of  the  world  here 
and  there.  The  loftier  plains  lie  bathed  in  its  golden  ra- 
diance ;  but  the  lowlands  of  the  earth,  its  valleys,  its  deep 


I02  Beliefs  about  Man. 

abysses,  its  wildernesses,  are  still  in  the  darkness,  not  of  the 
coming  night,  but  of  a  retreating  morning.  Humanity  is 
only  a  young  Hercules  in  his  cradle  as  yet,  but  like  Her- 
cules endued  with  the  immortal  vigor  that  is  to  be  devel- 
oped by  and  by,  and  which  even  now,  in  his  baby  hands,  has 
been  able  to  strangle,  one  after  another,  many  of  the  ser- 
pents of  darkness  and  barbarism,  of  suffering  and  wrong, 
that  have  threatened  his  young  existence.  But  the  great 
labors  that  are  to  cleanse  the  earth  and  fit  it  for  the  habita- 
tion of  the  perfect  man,  the  wanderings  over  the  world  to 
redeem  and  lift  it  up,  these  are  all  before  him. 

It  would  be  a  curious  subject  of  inquiry,  had  we  the  means 
for  getting  at  it,  to  find  out  how  many  people  in  England 
and  America  have  been  really  and  seriously  troubled  in  their 
minds  by  Mother  Shipton's  prophecy  that  the  world  would 
come  to  an  end  in  1881.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know 
how  many  have  been  afraid  that  the  world  might  be  on  the 
verge  of  its  ruin  ;  how  many  have  been  in  the  state  of  mind 
of  Madame  De  Stael  in  regard  to  ghosts, —  not  believing  in 
them,  but  afraid  of  them,  nevertheless.  It  is  curious  and  at 
the  same  time  sad  to  see  how,  in  the  present  half-civilized, 
superstitious  condition  of  the  world,  even  among  those  that 
are  the  best  and  most  enlightened,  any  fraud,  if  it  be  only 
wild  enough  and  foolish  enough,  can  gain  currency  and  in- 
fluence. What  are  the  facts  in  regard  to  the  condition  and 
prospects  of  our  planet  ?  How  long  may  we  expect  that  the 
solid  earth  will  be  solid  underneath  the  advancing  tread  of 
its  growing  civilization  ? 

The  future  of  this  earth,  like  the  future  of  a  little  child, 
depends  on  its  nursing  mother,  the  sun.  That  far-off  orb  in 
the  heavens,  a  million  and  a  half  times  larger  than  the  whole 
mass  of  our  planet,  holds  us  in  its  arms,  and  nourishes  us 
into  life  and   beauty  and   happiness.      How   long   may  we 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  103 

then  expect  to  continue  in  our  present  circuit,  dancing  about 
this  bright  orb  and  drinking  in  its  life  and  glory  ? 

Helmholtz,  and  those  who  have  given  special  attention  to 
this  subject,  tell  us  that,  according  to  the  present  processes 
at  work  in  the  sun,  we  may  expect  it  to  continue  its  present 
relations  to  the  earth  for  at  least  some  millions  of  years.  So 
that,  practically,  humanity  has  before  it  infinite  time  in  which 
to  accomplish  its  mighty  achievements  and  to  turn  its  dreams 
into  realities. 

The  next  question  we  need  to  raise  is  whether  the  earth, 
with  its  natural  resources,  may  be  expected  to  furnish  an 
adequate  supply  for  the  ever-accumulating,  heightening,  and 
broadening  demands  of  humanity,  as  it  becomes  more  and 
more  civilized  in  the  future.  To  this  question,  we  may  say, 
on  the  basis  of  the  best  authority  that  exists  at  the  present 
time,  that  the  resources  of  the  earth  are  practically  inexhaus- 
tible, and  that  man  is  endowed  with  a  competent  power  to 
develop  and  control  these  resources,  so  that  they  shall  keep 
step  with  his  ever-advancing  needs. 

Now  then,  with  this  basis  underneath  our  feet,  let  us  look 
at  a  few  of  the  great  problems  that  need  to  be  solved  before 
humanity  approaches  this  ideal  completeness.  And  let  us 
ask  whether  these  problems  can  be  solved  by  the  power 
which  we  know  to  exist  already  in  man. 

The  first  problem  is  that  old  prime  question  of  the  world, 
that  met  humanity  on  the  very  threshold  of  its  existence  and 
that  has  not  been  completely  solved  as  yet, —  the  problem 
of  subsistence.  If  you  think  of  it  for  a  moment  and  esti- 
mate the  relation  in  which  the  simple  question  of  food  and 
clothing  stands  to  all  the  higher  development  of  the  race, 
you  will  be  able  to  see  very  easily  that  this  is  the  first  prob- 
lem of  civilization.  Man  must  conquer  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence ;  he  must  make  subsistence  easy ;   he   must  tread 


104  Beliefs  about  Man. 

hunger  and  want  and  poverty  underneath  his  feet  and  be 
able  to  keep  them  there,  and  to  forget  these  lower  hungers 
because  they  are  so  easily  satisfied,  before  he  can  be  re- 
leased, set  free  from  this  grinding  power  that  holds  him  face 
to  face  with  the  dust,  before  he  can  be  free  to  remember 
that  he  has  a  brain  and  a  heart  and  a  soul,  before  he  can  be 
free  to  unfold  all  those  higher,  finer  qualities  that  make  up 
our  complete  definition  of  a  man.  The  wild  beast  of  the 
forest  simply  roars  for  his  prey,  hungers  when  he  does  not 
find  it,  devours  it  ravenously  when  he  does,  and  then  sleeps ; 
waking  up  to  go  through  the  process  again,  and  sleep  again. 
This  is  the  animal  life,  bound  to  the  dust,  simply  competent 
to  achieve  the  one  result  of  bare  existence.  Until  man  rises 
above  this,  he  cannot  rise  very  much  above  the  animal.  Is  it 
possible  for  him  to  achieve  this  triumph  ?  I  believe  that  it  is. 
I  believe  that  the  resources  of  the  earth  are  sufficient.  I  be- 
lieve that  the  growing  intelligence  of  man  will  prove  itself 
efficient  to  deal  with  this  great  question.  I  believe  that  the 
time  shall  come  when  poverty  and  grinding  want  and  hunger 
shall  be  things  of  the  past,  so  far  away  that  the  humanity  of 
that  happy  time  shall  only  remember  tliem  as  a  distant  tradi- 
tion, as  we  recall  the  cave-dwellers  and  our  barbaric  ancestors 
before  they  had  discovered  fire  and  the  first  rude  implements 
with  which  they  began  their  conquest  over  the  world. 

I  think  if  you  estimate  the  period  that  has  been  covered 
by  civilization  as  contrasted  with  the  period  preceding  that, 
and  if  you  look  carefully  at  what  man  during  this  brief  pe- 
riod has  already  achieved,  you  will  find  your  heart  beating 
high  with  hope  and  expectation,  you  will  feel  that  there  is  no 
problem  of  the  world  too  hard  for  this  wonderful  being  to 
solve. 

How  long  has  man  been  here  on  the  planet  ?  The  best 
authorities  tell  us  the  very  lowest  estimate  we   should  make 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  105 

is  one  hundred  thousand  years,  that  a  reasonable  estimate 
is  two  hundred  thousand  years,  and  many  of  those  most  com- 
petent tell  us  we  must  stretch  it  even  longer  than  that. 

How  long  has  he  been  called  civilized  ?  A  brief  four  or 
five  thousand  years  in  all ;  for  the  very  beginning  and  the 
very  condition  of  civilization  were  two  grand  discoveries,  the 
process  of  smelting  iron  ore  and  the  discovery  of  the  pho- 
netic alphabet.  Iron  put  a  weapon  in  man's  hands  for  subdu- 
ing external  nature.  The  alphabet  became  wings  to  set  his 
mind  and  soul  free,  a  medium  through  which  to  express  and 
embody  the  development  of  all  this  higher,  divine  side  of 
his  nature.  And  these  two,  iron  and  the  alphabet,  are  the 
t\vo  grandest  factors  in  the  history  of  man's  civilization. 
We  have  known  them  only  four  or  five  thousand  years.  Yet 
by  no  means  think  that  humanity  was  standing  still  during 
the  ninety-five  thousand  or  the  one  hundred  and  ninet}'-five 
thousand  years.  Its  progress  was  only  very  slow,  until  man 
grasped  at  last  in  his  growing  hands  the  implements  of 
progress. 

Since  that  time,  progress  has  been  in  geometrical  ratio. 
Each  achievement  has  been  a  new  step  on  which  to  stand, 
from  which  to  grasp  some  higher  and  grander  thing.  When, 
then,  we  conceive  the  entire  length  of  the  life  of  man  on  the 
earth,  and  how  much  he  has  done  within  the  last  four  or  five 
thousand  years,  which  to  the  whole  period  is  only  as  a  few  min- 
utes in  a  long  day,  we  may  not  hope  anytliing  that  shall  seem 
extravagant,  we  may  dream  and  believe  that  man  shall  at  last 
be  able  to  solve  these  great  questions  and  to  put  these  evils 
under  his  feet. 

I  believe  that  with  the  coming  of  this  time  there  will  be 
a  new  development  of  the  relation  in  which  individuals  shall 
stand  to  the  sources  of  the  earth's  supply,  from  which  comes 
all  our  wealth.     I  believe  that  there  will  be,  along  with  this 


io6  Beliefs  about  Man. 

progress  of  man,  an  intelligent,  self -limitation  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  earth,  so  that  it  shall  keep  step  with  the  possi- 
bility of  the  noblest  subsistence.  I  believe  that  the  intelli- 
gence and  power  of  man  are  perfectly  capable  of  dealing  with 
all  these  great  matters.  Man  will  then  develop  in  all  the 
higher  directions  now  represented  by  philosophy,  art,  science, 
morality,  religion,  social  refinement,  and  political  wisdom. 

When  poverty  has  been  abolished,  as  believe  me  it  will  be 
in  the  future,  what  next  ? 

I  wish  you  to  understand  that  as  I  discuss  these  great 
points,  one  after  another,  I  am  not  saying  that  one  of  these 
questions  will  be  settled,  and  then  the  next  one,  as  I  treat 
them.  I  must  deal  with  them  one  after  another,  but  they  will 
all  grow  and  develop  together,  just  as  we  know  in  the  past 
all  the  great  elements  that  constitute  human  civilization  have 
been  growing  side  by  side  in  harmonious  association. 

The  next  step  after  the  abolition  of  hunger  and  want  will 
be  the  practical  abolition  of  disease  and  pain.  Not  that 
they  may  ever  be  entirely  wiped  off  from  the  face  of  the 
earth ;  but  I  believe  that  they  may  be  reduced  to  so  slight 
a  minimum  that  they  shall  not  be  regarded  as  a  burden  or 
terror  any  more.  Only  enough  shall  remain  to  give  us  a 
background  against  which  to  define  health  and  life  and  joy. 
What  is  disease  t  What  is  pain  ?  They  are  simply  indica- 
tions and  necessary  results  of  broken  laws  of  nature.  And 
these  laws  are  discoverable  by  the  intelligence  of  man,  and 
man  is  competent  to  keep  them.  What  hinders  then  that 
this  great  question  shall  be  solved  at  last,  and  these  evils 
that  have  afflicted  and  affrighted  the  world  sent  into  the 
darkness  and  f orgetfulness  of  the  past  t 

Why,  just  think  of  it  for  a  moment!  How  long  has  it 
been  since  the  baleful  power  of  superstition  has  permitted 
man  to  study  the  nature  of  disease  and  pain,  and  treat  them  as 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  107 

natural  things  ?  Why,  within  fifty  years, —  yes,  within  twenty- 
five  years, —  physicians  have  been  persecuted  by  the  Protes- 
tant Church  for  the  discovery  and  the  use  of  ether,  because 
it  was  supposed  to  interfere  with  the  judgments  of  God  in 
sending  suffering  and  pain  to  humanity.  It  is  even  less 
than  two  hundred  years  since  the  civilized  world  has  been 
permitted  to  study  disease  and  pain  in  their  relation  to  nat- 
ural law  and  as  something  that  could  be  comprehended  or 
done  away  with.  The  supernatural  theory  of  these  things 
has  dominated  the  brain  and  heart  and  fear  of  man.  He 
has  not  dared  to  study  them,  lest  he  should  incur  the  wrath 
of  the  unseen  God.  All  that  medicine  has  achieved,  except 
that  which  has  come  by  happy  accident,  has  been  achieved 
within  a  very  few  years.  When  the  intelligence  of  man  has 
fittingly  developed,  and  the  whole  wide  field  of  cause  and 
effect  is  thrown  open,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  there  is 
not  a  disease  that  afflicts  the  world  to-day  that  may  not  be 
traced  to  its  cause,  and  there  is  not  a  cause  that  is  not 
largely  under  intelligent  human  control.  We  may  then  look 
forward  to  the  practical  abolition  of  disease  and  pain. 

We  shall  not  abolish  death ;  ijor  do  I  believe  that,  were  we 
wise  enough  to  see  through  the  blinding  tears  into  its  real 
meaning,  we  should  desire  to  do  so.  But  we  shall  add  to 
the  length  of  life  on  earth,  so  that  each  child  that  is  bom 
shall  be  permitted  to  taste  of  the  feast  and  see  the  beauty 
of  life ;  to  pass  through  the  cycle  of  human  experience ;  and 
then,  having  drunk  the  cup  to  the  dregs,  the  only  thing  left 
will  be,  like  a  tired  child  at  night,  to  close  his  eyes  and  go 
quietly  to  sleep. 

After  that  what?  Man  will  be  able  to  abolish  tyranny 
and  war  and  to  achieve  a  world-wide  human  freedom,  human 
self-control,  human  affinity  and  brotherhood.  The  time  will 
come  that  Tennyson  in  this  same  "  Locksley  Hall "  foresaw, 


io8  Beliefs  about  Man. 

when  there  shall  be  one  "  parliament  of  man,  the  federation 
of  the  world." 

What  is  it  that  stands  in  the  way  of  this  to-day  ?  Let  us 
glance  at  it,  and  see  if  the  difficulties  are  intelligible  and  re- 
movable. What  has  kept  nations  apart  ?  What  has  kept 
up  this  misunderstanding,  hatred,  these  feuds,  that  have 
drenched  the  world  with  blood  and  so  long  jDostponed  the 
day  of  individual  freedom  and  self-development  ?  The  causes 
are  perfectly  intelligible.  If  you  will  read  all  history,  you  will 
find  that  men  have  hated  each  other  just  in  proportion  as 
they  have  been  unacquainted  with  each  other.  Find  the 
barriers  that  have  separated  peoples,  and  you  will  find  the 
cause  of  misunderstanding,  enmity,  hate,  tyranny,  and  war. 

First,  mountain-chains,  which  were  practically  impassable 
in  ancient  times ;  wide  wastes  of  sea  and  ocean  that  were 
impassable  to  their  feeble,  childish  navigation ;  next,  lan- 
guages that  separated  them,  though  they  stood  face  to  face  ; 
tribal  and  race  traditions,  customs,  habits,  ways  of  thinking 
and  feeling  growing  out  of  their  isolation ;  the  fiction  of 
descent  from  some  common  ancestor  on  the  part  of  each  sep- 
arate tribe,  and  the  inheritance  from  its  supposed  ancestor 
of  his  ancient  feuds  and  hatreds  toward  his  enemies ;  and 
most  potent  of  all,  perhaps,  religious  differences,  the  belief 
that  each  tribe  was  ruled  by  a  god  who  cared  for  that  tribe 
alone,  and  who  hated  not  only  the  alien  tribe,  but  the  god  of 
the  alien  tribe, —  these  were  the  walls  of  separation  between 
races  and  nations.  'And,  when  some  of  these  beliefs  were 
outgrown,  the  belief  that  the  god  of  one  particular  tribe  hated 
the  nation  that  did  not  worship  him  after  the  particular  fash- 
ion popular  there  kept  people  apart.  It  became  man's  deep- 
est religious  duty  to  hate  anything  that  was  alien  :  and  as  late 
in  the  history  of  the  world  as  Plato,  you  find  him  commend- 
ing the  Athenians,  as  though  it  were  a  virtue,  because  they, 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  109 

above  almost  all  other  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  hated 
anything  foreign,  regarding  anything  beyond  the  limits  of 
their  own  city  and  nation  as  barbaric.  It  lingers  still  with 
us  in  the  kind  of  distrust  and  dislike  we  have  toward  other 
people  for  no  better  reason  than  that  they  do  not  do  things 
as  we  are  accustomed  to  do  them  ;  forgetting  that  they  have 
the  same  cause  of  enmity  toward  us  because  we  do  not  do 
things  as  they  are  accustomed  to  do  them. 

That  this  religious  hatred  was  bitterest  of  all  you  see  in 
one  of  the  Psalms.  I  do  not  know  whether  David  was  its 
author  or  not ;  but,  whoever  it  was,  he  represented  the  senti- 
ments of  his  time.  "  Do  not  I  hate  them  that  hate  thee  ?  I 
hate  them  with  perfect  hatred  :  I  count  them  mine  enemies." 
It  is  these  misunderstandings,  these  misconceptions  and  dif- 
ferences that  have  kept  people  apart.  You  will  recall  an 
incident  repeated  more  than  once  in  the  revolutions  of 
France,  as  well  as  in  other  places,  where  the  people  in  their 
revolution  stood  face  to  face  with  the  soldiery  made  up  of 
the  people  themselves  ;  and,  as  the  soldiers  looked  the  people 
in  the  face  and  recognized  them  as  brothers  and  friends,  they 
refused  to  fire  upon  them,  though  at  the  orders  of  the  king 
himself.  The  moment  they  recognized  the  bond  of  common 
brotherhood,  that  moment  they  felt  that  the  cause  of  the 
people  was  their  cause  arid  they  could  fight  them  no  more. 
When  this  state  of  feeling  and  thinking  has  become  univer- 
sal, when  the  nations  have  flowed  together  and  mingled  in 
one,  when  they  have  looked  each  other  in  the  face  and 
have  felt  heart  beat  to  heart,  eye  flash  to  eye,  pulse  throb  to 
pulse,  and  hand-clasp  meet  in  hand-clasp,  no  longer  will  they 
be  willing  to  butcher  each  other  for  the  whim  of  kings  or 
governments,  or  to  rectify  fantastic  frontiers  and  national 
boundaries.  They  will  recognize  that  deeper  element  of 
humanity  that  makes  the  world  one.     When  the  people  rise 


no  Beliefs  about  Man. 

in  their  intelligence  and  create  an  ideal  government,  that 
government  will  simply  have  the  general  superintendence  of 
affairs  too  large  for  individual  hands  to  manage,  the  self-pro- 
tecting power  of  the  whole  that  looks  after  the  personal  in- 
terest of  each  one.  When  the  government  shall  be  reduced 
to  that,  all  wars  shall  cease  and  the  nations  shall  be  one  peo- 
ple, the  children  of  one  Father  in  heaven. 

As  one  of  the  grandest  conditions  of  this,  the  time  will 
come  when  there  will  be  one  grand  metropolitan,  cosmo- 
politan language  spoken  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

To  illustrate  what  I  mean  ;  there  was  a  time,  after  the  break- 
ing up  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  before  the  modern  nation- 
alities in  Europe  had  become  established,  when  there  were 
several  duchies  or  provinces  in  what  is  now  the  kingdom  of 
France,  each  one  speaking  its  separate  dialect ;  and,  so  far  as 
the  power  or  fitness  of  either  one  of  these  dialects  to  become 
the  supreme  language  of  France  was  concerned,  they  stood 
on  the  same  level.  But  political  and  social  reasons  decided 
that  Paris  should  be  France,  and  so  the  dialect  of  Paris  be- 
came the  language  of  France,  and  the  others  were  reduced 
to  the  secondary  position  of  dialects,  ox  patois.  Precisely  the 
same  process  is  going  on,  on  a  world-wide  scale ;  and  the  one 
language  that  seems  destined  to  be  metropolitan  is  the  Eng- 
lish. It  is  already  the  language  of  the  world's  commerce. 
With  English  speech,  a  man  can  travel  around  the  world  to- 
day with  greater  ease  than  with  any  other  tongue.  The 
forces  at  work  will  not  absolutely  displace  and  cause  to  die 
out  all  other  languages,  but  will  make  this  one  the  grand 
language  of  the  civilized  world,  and  by  means  of  it  bring  all 
the  different  races  of  men  into  an  ability  to  know  each  other 
and  to  correspond  with  each  other  with  the  utmost  freedom. 

The  external  barriers,  the  mountain  chains, —  where  are 
they   now  ?     Tunnelled,  levelled.     Where   are  the  seas  and 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  iii 

oceans?  Even  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  have  become  the 
common  ferries  of  the  civilized  world.  The  old  fictions  of 
tribal  ancestry  have  died  out  in  the  presence  of  greater 
knowledge  ;  and  religious  disputes  are  becoming  no  longer 
the  serious  things  they  once  were,  of  rack  and  thumb-screw 
and  stake.  They  are  only  coarse,  rough  words  at  the  most, 
in  newspapers. 

The  world,  then,  is  coming  to  mutual  acquaintance  and  a 
knowledge  of  itself.  Only  one  other  theme  must  I  touch  on 
by  itself,  and  that  —  because  of  its  intrinsic  importance  — 
what  we  may  expect  to  be  the  religion  of  the  world. 

Every  religion  is  recognized  as  having  two  sides.  One  face 
looks  heavenward,  and  deals  with  the  great  problem  of  God 
himself.  The  other  looks  earthward,  toward  man,  and  deals 
with  the  relations  which  man  sustains  to  that  which  we  call 
morality.  Morality,  in  the  increasing  knowledge  of  the 
world,  will  come  to  be  settled  as  a  science,  concerning  which 
there  can  be  no  intelligent  dispute.  The  break  of  Luther 
with  the  see  of  Rome  was  the  first  great  step  in  the  modern 
world  toward  that  to  which  we  are  to  come  in  the  domain  of 
theology.  There  are  questions  of  ultimate  truth  in  theology 
that,  since  they  are  infinite  and  we  are  finite,  must  forever  be 
beyond  us.  In  what  relation  will  the  future  of  the  civilized 
world  stand  to  these  problems  "i  It  will  stand  in  the  presence 
of  them  calmly,  admitting  the  perfect  freedom  of  the  broadest 
speculation,  and  without  attaching  any  penalty,  governmental 
or  social,  on  account  of  the  speculative  views  that  man  may 
hold  concerning  questions  about  which  the  wisest  can  know 
so  very  little.  The  future  religion  of  the  world  will  resolve 
itself  into  goodness,  charity,  love  toward  man,  mutual  help- 
fulness and  service;  toward  the  universe,  admiration,  wor- 
ship,  awe   so  profound  that  man   will   not   dare   to  speak 


112  Beliefs  about  Man. 

rashly,  nor  to  charge  with  crime  one  who  sees  these  great 
problems  in  another  light  than  that  in  which  they  appear  to 
himself. 

We  may,  I  believe,  picture  to  ourselves,  as  the  probable 
future,  the  whole  external  world  subdued  to  man  and  turned 
into  a  garden.  We  may  picture  the  development  of  innu- 
merable new  sciences,  new  arts,  new  forces,  new  powers 
that  we  do  not  even  dream  of  to-day.  We  have  not  attained 
one-half  the  mastery  of  the  mightiest  power  already  in  our 
hands.  There  is  not  an  engine  in  the  world  to-day  that  does 
not  waste  a  great  part  of  the  fuel  which  it  consumes  and  of 
the  steam  which  it  generates.  The  power  of  the  world  can 
be  doubled  therefore  even  here.  But,  beyond  question,  new 
powers,  new  discoveries,  are  to  be  made  that  shall  give  man 
unlimited  control  of  the  earth.  An  American  poet  little 
known,  unknown  by  myself  except  for  that  wonderful  poem 
on  "Steam  "  which  he  has  written,  makes  the  steam  say, — 

"  And  soon  I  intend  you  may  go  and  play, 
While  I  manage  this  world  by  myself." 

I  believe  that  powers  as  yet  undreamed  of  are  to  be 
developed,  that  shall  enable  the  world  to  be  released,  not 
merely  that  men  may  go  and  play,  but  that  they  may  become 
all  that  it  means  to  be  a  man. 

The  world  turned  into  a  garden,  human  life  prolonged ; 
evil  and  sorrow  and  hunger  largely  put  under  foot,  out  of 
sight,  and  forgotten ;  mankind  as  one  family,  with  one 
Father  in  heaven,  at  peace,  in  mutual  helpfulness,  in  right 
relations  to  each  other ;  to  that  we  may  look  forward.  In 
giving  the  crowning  fact  of  all,  I  wish  to  close,  as  I  began, 
with  a  passage  beautiful  as  poetry,  profound  as  science,  wise 
as  philosophy,  from  Tennyson,  as  he  outlines  what  will  be 


The  Earthly  Outlook.  113 

the  future  relation  in  which  man  and  woman  will  stand  to 
each  other: — 

"Not  like  to  like,  but  like  in  difference  : 
Yet  in  the  long  years  liker  must  they  grow ; 
The  man  be  more  of  woman,  she  of  man ; 
He  gain  in  sweetness  and  in  moral  height. 
Nor  lose  the  wrestling  thews  that  throw  the  world ; 
She  mental  breadth,  nor  fail  in  childward  care. 
Nor  lose  the  childlike  in  the  larger  mind: 
Till  at  the  last  she  set  herself  to  man, 
Like  perfect  music  unto  noble  words ; 
And  so  these  twain,  upon  the  skirts  of  Time, 
Sit  side  by  side,  full-summ'd  in  all  their  powers, 
Dispensing  harvest,  sowing  the  To-be, 
Self-reverent  each  and  reverencing  each. 
Distinct  in  individualities. 
But  like  each  other  ev'n  as  those  who  love. 
Then  comes  the  statelier  Eden  back  to  men  : 
Then  reign  the  world's  great  bridals,  chaste  and  calm  : 
Then  springs  the  crowning  race  of  humankind. 
May  these  things  be  !  " 


Note. —  When  shall  "  these  things  be  "  }  Not  in  their  completeness 
for  many  ages  yet.  But  the  seed  is  planted,  and  the  stalk  is  up.  It  is  a 
matter  of  time  only  when  the  blossom  and  fruit  shall  appear.  Slow 
growths  last  the  longest.  As  compared  with  the  past,  a  few  thousand 
years  more  are  not  long  to  wait. 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 


It  is  very  difficult  for  men  to  argue  while  the  heart  aches 
or  with  eyes  dimmed  with  tears.  And  if  we  do  not  feel  the 
pain  tugging  at  our  hearts  to-day,  if  our  eyes  now  are  clear 
and  able  to  reflect  the  light  that  is  in  the  sky  above  us,  still 
is  it  not  true,  in  the  case  of  every  one  of  us,  that  we  have 
had  these  times  of  heartache,  these  hours  of  dimmed  eyes 
when  we  could  not  see  ?  And  can  we  put  all  these  memories 
away  from  us  so  completely  as  to  enable  us  to  treat  a  matter 
like  this  dispassionately  in  the  clear  light  of  reason,  unbiassed 
by  any  prejudice  or  fear  or  hope  ?  Are  not  these  desires  of 
ours,  these  longings,  these  precious  bitter-sweet  memories  of 
the  past,  like  some  outside  influence  that  deflects  the  needle 
from  the  pole  ?  And,  if  we  will  find  the  direction  of  the  true 
north,  must  we  not  discover  some  way  of  isolating  the  needle, 
so  that  it  will  tremble  toward  its  true  direction  ?  These  out- 
side forces  that  do  thus  deflect  the  needle  are  a  part  of  the 
very  problem  itself;  but,  to  find  out  their  real  worth,  we 
must  isolate  the  needle  if  possible,  and  then  measure  the 
difference  between  the  north  and  the  point  of  its  deflection. 
So  if  we  will  estimate  rightly  the  force  of  these  passions,  the 
hopes  and  fears  that  sway  us,  and  that  sweep  over  us  in  such 
mighty  power,  we  must,  if  we  can,  look  at  them  objectively, 
estimate  them,  measure  them,  weigh  them,  see  what  they  are 


Is  Death  the  End?  115 

and  how  much  they  mean.  Let  us,  then,  this  morning  look 
our  problem  as  clearly  as  we  can  in  the  face. 

I  do  not  know  how  it  may  be  with  you,  but  I,  for  one,  can 
have  no  sympathy  with  that  common  saying,  that  I  hear  on 
every  hand,  "  If  there  be  no  future  life,  then  this  one  is  all 
a  mockery  and  a  sham," — that  this  is  not  worth  while.  Of 
course  this  must  be  a  matter  of  personal  feeling  only.  I 
cannot  answer  for  you;  but  for  myself  I  wish  to  put  it  on 
record  that  in  despite  of  all  life's  tears,  with  all  its  heart- 
aches, with  all  its  disappointments,  with  all  its  poverty,  with  all 
its  sorrows, —  and  pardon  me  if  I  say  that  of  these  I  have  borne 
a  full  share,  — with  all  these,  this  life  seems  to  me  so  full  of 
mystery,  so  wondrous,  so  grand,  that,  whatever  the  future 
may  have  in  store  for  me,  I  would  not  have  it  that  I  had  not 
been.  This  brief  look  at  the  wonderful  light  of  the  blue  sky  ; 
this  hour  of  marvel  at  the  stars  of  night ;  this  bending  over 
the  mystery  of  a  flower  or  blade  of  grass,  and  seeing  there 
the  infinite  might  and  power  pushing  itself  up  in  infinitesi- 
mal forms  of  beauty,  grace,  and  fragrance ;  this  clasping  the 
hand  of  friend,  if  it  be  only  for  an  hour;  this  feeling  the 
throb  of  human  love,  if  only  for  a  little  while, —  all  these,  I  say, 
seem  to  me  so  wondrous,  so  grand,  that  I  rejoice  and  am 
thankful  every  day  that  I  live.  And  if,  at  the  end,  it  is  only 
saying  good-by  to  it  forever,  still  even  with  my  last  breath 
I  would  say,  "  I  am  glad  that  I  have  been  there  even  this 
little  while." 

Another  preliminary  point :  we  are  told  on  ever}-  hand,  we 
hear  it  echoed  from  pulpit  and  platform,  it  is  uttered  through 
newspapers  and  reviews,  it  is  talked  on  the  street,  it  is  used 
as  a  cry  of  warning,  and  with  it  men  shout,  "  Halt !  "  to  the 
march  of  human  intelligence, —  we  are  told  that  the  progress 
of  scientific  thought  and  investigation  is  leading  the  world 
down  toward  the  darkness  of  materialism,  the  abyss  of  noth- 


Il6  Beliefs  about  Man. 

ingness.  And  they  cry  out  to  us  that,  if  we  wish  to  keep  the 
precious  hopes  of  the  past,  we  must  retrace  our  steps  and 
come  back  again  into  the  old  circles  of  faith  and  ecclesiastical 
trust.  I  wish  to  say  again,  concerning  this,  that  I  believe 
nothing  of  the  kind.  I  wish  to  say  reverently,  simply,  but 
with  all  the  earnestness  I  can  in  the  utterance,  that,  even  were 
it  so,  I  would  not  have  the  old  past,  or  go  back  one  step. 
For  better,  infinitely  better,  say  I,  is  materialism,  the  dearest 
hopes  being  quenched  in  utter  nothingness,  than  that  which 
the  old  ecclesiastical  Orthodoxy  of  the  world  dares  to  hold 
up  in  the  face  of  human  intelligence,  offering  it  to  us  as  a 
gospel, —  "good  news."  Is  it  good  news  that  you  and  I  and 
a  few  of  us,  perhaps,  shall  attain  immortality  and  bliss,  but 
that  others,  the  larger  part  of  humanity,  or  call  it  the  lesser 
part,  or  reduce  it  to  a  million,  ten  thousand,  one  thousand, 
one  hundred,  a  single  human  soul,  that  this  soul  shall  find 
eternity  to  be  only  an  everlasting  wail  ?  Is  that  "  good  news  " 
that  can  be  given  to  a  waiting,  hungering  world  in  terms  like 
these  t  Better,  I  say,  any  other  alternative  that  the  human 
imagination  can  conceive.  Better  that  the  world  lose  all 
respect  for  order  and  law,  and  hold  one  high  carnival  of 
crime,  that  it  plunge  into  woes  and  sorrows  that  stretch  them- 
selves out  to  the  very  crack  of  doom,  if  it  last  a  million  years ; 
and  then,  if  there  may  be  nothing  at  the  end,  there  is  hope  as 
compared  with  that  which  they  dare  tell  us  is  the  gospel. 
Better  anything  rather  than  the  wail  and  the  cry  and  the 
heartache  and  the  bitter  hopelessness  that  stretch  on  until 
the  millions  of  ages  are  only  minutes  in  their  timeless  tread. 
Better  no  future  than  a  misnamed  gospel  promise  like  this. 

One  other  point  as  preliminary.  We  must  bear  in  mind 
clearly  the  nature  of  the  problem  that  we  are  discussing  this 
morning.  We  must  have  a  clear  definition  of  what  we  mean, 
and  have  a  right  to  mean,  by  the  word  "knowledge,"  so  that 


Is  Death  the  End?  wj 

we  may  not  be  disappointed  with  the  result  of  our  investiga- 
tion. 

We  mean  by  knowledge  that  which  can  be  investigated 
and  verified  as  a  part  of  human  experience.  Nothing  that 
transcends  the  experience  of  humanity  either  as  being  above 
our  reach,  or  as  being  (for  the  present)  beyond  our  reach, 
can,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  term,  be  called  knowledge. 

Now,  then,  if  there  be  another  life,  if  death  be  not  the 
end,  but  if  at  the  same  time  this  other  life  be  something 
higher  than  the  present,  under  conditions  which  as  yet  we 
cannot  experience  or  imagine,  as  manhood  transcends  child- 
hood ;  if  it  be  something  beyond  our  present  reach,  like  a 
horizon  under  which  no  ship  has  ever  sailed,  like  a  country 
unvisited,  a  sea  unexplored ;  then,  Avhatever  we  may  think  or 
hope  or  believe,  whatever  we  may  have  reason  to  think  or 
hope  or  believe,  still  we  cannot  as  yet  properly  call  it  knowl- 
edge. Suppose,  for  example,  that  one  comes  to  me,  and 
makes  the  claim  that  he  is  from  that  other  shore.  But  he  is 
here  nov/  as  a  part  of  this  present  earthly  experience  of  mine. 
I  cannot  go  over  beyond  to  verify  his  report.  How  can  I  es- 
tablish the  fact  that  he  has  really  been  there  ?  How  can  I 
establish  the  fact,  by  what  he  claims,  that  there  is  any  such 
country ;  for,  while  he  is  here,  he  is  not  there ;  and  it  may  be 
never  has  been  ?  I  speak  of  tliis  only  to  suggest  the  difficul- 
ties that  surround  the  investigation  of  a  tlieme  like  this. 
And  yet,  whether  we  shall  be  able  to  call  it  demonstrated 
knowledge  or  not,  we  need  to  consider  carefully  how  much 
may  be  represented  by  those  two  little  words,  "  faith  "  and 
"  hope."  We  need  to  draw  a  clear  dividing  line  between  that 
which  goes  by  the  name  of  faith  and  that  which  we  may  truly 
call  a  scientific  faith.  Faith,  in  the  popular  language,  as  it  is 
used  many  and  many  a  time,  means  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  simple  credulity,  accepting  a  statement  without  evidence. 


Il8  Beliefs  about  Man. 

Not  such  is  the  faith  to  which  I  refer, —  the  faith  that  is  the 
substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen, 
the  faith  that  the  scientific  man  holds  in  regard  to  that  which 
he  has  not  yet  been  able  to  demonstrate ;  which  is  separate 
from  knowledge,  but  which  moves  along  the  line  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  past,  which  stands  on  the  highest  peak  of 
the  present  attainment,  and,  in  accordance  with  all  the  prin- 
ciples that  have  given  us  the  grand  demonstrations  that  we 
have  already  attained,  simply  looks  forward  and  anticipates 
that  which  it  may  expect  to  realize.  To  illustrate  what  I 
mean,  take  the  faith  of  Columbus  in  regard  to  the  New 
World.  He  was  not  able  to  prove  it.  No  man  in  that  day 
could  demonstrate  the  rotundity  of  the  earth;  but  there  were 
reasons  of  this  kind,  and  of  that  kind,  reasons  here  and  rea- 
sons there,  that  led  the  wisest  of  the  ancient  world,  of  all  the 
ages  down  to  the  time  of  Columbus,  to  speculate,  to  hope, 
believe  and  prophesy  that  some  day  it  would  be  demonstrated. 
And  in  this  faith,  not  in  an  unreasoning  faith,  not  in  cre- 
dulity, but  in  the  light  of  what  was  known  and  following  along 
the  rays  of  that  light,  out  into  the  darkness  Columbus  sailed. 
He  was  not  a  fanatic,  he  was  not  a  credulous  man.  But,  in 
the  light  of  all  the  past,  he  sailed  on  into  an  unveiled  future, 
and  discovered  the  New  World.  Even  then,  the  question  of 
the  world's  shape  was  not  settled. 

It  was  only  when  Magellan,  that  grandest  navigator  of  all 
the  world,  believing  in  the  prophecy  of  the  shadow,  ventured 
to  sail  out  and  round  and  beyond  the  known,  with  the  daring 
purpose  of  circumnavigating  the  globe,  even  when  the  Church 
declared  to  him  that  he  would  be  lost,  and  his  sailors  muti- 
nied, and  the  wise  men  called  him  a  fool,  and  told  him  there 
was  nothing  there,  that  he  would  be  lost  in  the  wide  wastes 
of  darkness  and  never  reach  his  home  again, —  it  was  only 
then  that  he  attained  the  demonstration.     That  shadow  had 


Is  Death  the  End?  119 

a  great  meaning  at  its  heart.  He  had  noticed  that  the 
shadow  of  the  earth  during  an  eclipse  of  the  moon  is  round  j 
and  this  indicating  shadow  led  him  on  until  he  turned  it 
into  a  magnificent  fact.  Thus  we,  not  unreasoning,  not 
credulous,  simply  standing  on  the  farthest  verge  of  attain- 
ment, launch  ourselves  on  the  unknown,  and  sail  toward 
demonstration. 

I  believe  that,  though  we  may  never  be  able  to  demon- 
strate the  truth,  still  it  is  best  as  it  is.  The  order  of  human 
growth  and  progress  is  a  wise  one, —  first  that  which  is  natural, 
afterward  that  which  is  spiritual;  beginning  here  in  the 
present  and  completing  this,  then  leaping  out  into  that 
which  is  beyond. 

In  the  ages  of  the  world,  when  there  has  been  the  clearest 
and  most  perfect  confidence  in  a  future  life,  this  life  has  been 
little  benefited  by  it.  .  I  have  read  you  some  words  from  the 
Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead.  Go  back  for  a  moment  into 
that  ancient  Egypt,  and  see  the  time  when  there  was  the  most 
explicit  and  most  earnest  and  unquestioning  faith  in  the 
future  life,  more  earnest,  perhaps,  than  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  before  or  since,  there  or  any  other  where.  So  unques- 
tioning, so  real  was  it  that  one  of  the  first  things  that  a  newly 
married  groom  and  bride  provided  for  was  the  disposition  of 
their  bodies  after  death.  Death  dominated  every  thought. 
It  meant  to  them  another  life  beyond  that  which  we  call 
death ;  but  it  so  dominated  the  present  that  this  life  was  all 
crushed  out  and  ancient  Egypt  was  one  dreary,  desolating 
tyranny, —  tyranny  in  government,  tyranny  in  society,  tyranny 
in  religion.  The  future  blotted  out  the  present,  and  made  it 
poor  and  mean. 

So  in  the  Middle  Ages,  during  the  "ages  of  faith,"  as  they 
are  called  by  the  Catholic  Church,  there  never  has  been  a 
time,  except  perhaps  in  ancient  Egypt,  when  this  world  has 


120  Beliefs  about  Man. 

been  less  cared  for  than  then.  Men  dreamed  so  much  of  the 
future,  and  cared  so  much  for  being  ready  for  the  future,  that 
this  world  was  left  practically  out  of  account.  And  this  evil 
was  increased  by  that  pernicious  faith,  not  yet  outgrown,  that 
the  next  world  is  to  be  secured  by  a  line  of  conduct  utterly 
divorced  from  the  development  of  this.  So  long  as  men  be- 
lieve in  a  future  eternal  life ;  so  long  as  they  believe,  as  they 
must  if  they  believe  at  all,  that  it  is  of  infinite  importance 
as  compared  with  the  present ;  and  that  the  way  to  get  ready 
for  that  world  is  to  scorn  this  one,  so  long  this  world  will 
continue  to  be  what  it  has  been  called,  a  vale  of  tears.  But 
let  men  believe  in  that  future  life,  cherishing  it  as  a  hope 
in  their  hearts,  as  a  grand  outlook,  but  carry  along  with  it 
the  faith  that  it  means  only  the  culmination,  the  completion, 
the  coronation  of  a  noble  life  lived  here,  then  the  two,  not 
divorced  from  each  other,  shall  stand  in  the  relation  of  man- 
hood to  childhood.  By  completing  and  rounding  out  nobly 
the  life  that  is  given  us  here,  we  shall  grow  naturally  into 
the  eternal  life. 

Now,  then,  let  us  face  the  problem  frankly  and  squarely, 
and  see  if  we  know  anything  about  it ;  or  what  the  facts  we 
do  know  naturally  lead  us  to  think.  I  shall  pass  by  nearly 
all  the  old  and  common  arguments  on  the  subject,  not  say- 
ing that  they  are  of  no  worth,  casting  not  one  breath  of 
slight  upon  them,  simply  telling  you  to  keep  them,  cherish 
them  in  your  hearts  if  you  find  they  give  you  strength 
or  comfort  you,  using  them  not  as  separate  from  those  I 
shall  offer  you,  but  as  buttressing  them  and  giving  them 
additional  support. 

The  old  Hebrew  poet  puts  the  problem  so  forcibly  that  I 
want  to  give  you  his  words  :  "There  is  hope  of  a  tree,  if  it 
be  cut  down,  that  the  tender  branch  thereof  will  not  cease. 
Though  the  root  thereof  wax  old  in  the  earth,  and  the  stock 


Is  Death  the  End?  I2i 

thereof  die  in  the  ground,  yet  through  the  scent  of  water  it 
will  bud,  and  bring  forth  boughs  like  a  plant.  ...  If  a  man 
die,  shall  he  live  again  }  "  That  is  the  question.  But  here 
the  old  writer,  it  seems  to  me,  misses  the  main  point  of  our 
discussion.  Cut  down  a  tree,  and  let  the  rains  of  spring  come 
down  upon  it,  and  the  sunshine  fall  about  the  roots,  and  a 
new  shoot  will  come  up  and  a  new  tree  develop ;  but  it  is  not 
the  old  tree.  It  is  another.  One  of  our  American  poetesses, 
Mrs.  Whitney,  has  sung  to  us  beautifully  in  regard  to  the  fact 
that  God  does  not  give  us  strange  flowers  every  year,  but 
that  the  old  familiar  faces  look  into  ours  every  spring.  And 
she  fondly  clasps  to  her  heart  the  sentiment  that  it  is  the 
same  old  violet  that  is  here.  But  it  is  not  the  violet  of  last 
spring.  It  is  a  violet  that  never  was  here  before,  and  never 
will  be  again.  It  seems  to  me  we  can  get  very  little  hope 
from  that  class  of  comparisons.  Carried  out  logically,  they 
only  prove  that  this  body  of  man,  when  it  disintegrates  and 
crumbles  into  dust,  is  not  annihilated  ;  that  it  will  spring  up 
another  year,  perhaps  in  the  grasses  over  our  graves  or  in 
flowers  by  and  by.  Perhaps  these  same  particles  may  re- 
appear in  another  human  body,  but  it  will  not  be  /.  I  gather 
no  hope  therefore  from  comparisons  like  these. 

Now,  what  is  the  fact  as  demonstrated  to  us  by  the  best 
science  of  the  age  ?  What  do  we  know  1  We  know  that  mat- 
ter is  never  annihilated  :  we  know  that  force  is  never  annihi- 
lated. Matter  and  force  are  eternal.  They  may  take  on 
their  million  varied  Protean  forms  summer  after  summer,  age 
after  age ;  but  matter  remains  the  same,  force  remains  the 
same.  If  I  take  a  crystal  and  break  it  to  pieces,  tearing 
asunder  the  fragments  that  make  up  its  beautiful  form  ;  if  I 
crush  it  and  grind  it  into  powder ;  if  I  turn  it  into  vapor  and 
drive  it  off  into  the  air, —  still  with  competent  instruments  I 
could  gather  out  of  the  air  again  the  very  identical  elements 


122  Beliefs  about  Man. 

that  entered  into  its  composition.  What  was  crystal  re- 
mains, only  in  other  forms.  And  so  force  remains.  Whatever 
changes  it  may  pass  through,  it  never  ceases  to  be.  But  I  do 
not  want  simply  to  have  it  proved  to  me  that  the  particles 
that  compose  this  body  are  never  to  be  annihilated.  The 
question  is.  Shall  I  continue  to  think,  to  love,  to  feel,  to  hope  ? 
Shall  I  pass  through  this  great  change  called  death,  and  shall 
I  be  I,  five  minutes  or  a  year  after  friends  gather  about 
this  body,  and  say,  "  He  is  gone  "  ?  That  is  the  question 
that  we  want  settled,  if  it  may  be. 

Now  have  we  any  light  on  it .?  If  we  have  nothing  very 
positive,  we  have  some  very  powerful  negative  considerations. 
I  wish  to  give  you  some  of  the  grandest  attainments  of  the 
world  as  bearing  on  this  great  question. 

I  have  said  that  science  can  explain  a  tree.  Science  can 
explain  a  crystal.  Science  can  explain  a  flower,  even  to  its 
perfume.  It  can  tell  me  all  the  particles  remaining,  all  the 
forces  remaining,  all  the  gases  remaining,  after  it  is  dissolved. 
Science  has  been  trying  for  ages  to  explain  man  after  this 
same  fashion.  But  here,  according  to  the  testimony  of  the 
wisest  men  in  the  world,  science  has  come  to  a  halt.  It  has 
to  face  a  problem  that  reaches  into  the  fathomless  mystery  of 
the  infinite. 

I  touch  this  desk.  A  sensation  is  started  in  my  nerves, 
runs  up  the  nerves  toward  the  brain,  and  I  think  of  the  desk, 
and  I  notice  its  hardness,  its  color.  As  a  result  of  that 
thought,  I  make  some  other  motion,  or  give  utterance  to 
the  same  through  words.  And  so  here  is  a  chain  of  cause 
and  effect  running  from  the  desk  through  my  brain,  and  im- 
mediately thereafter  finding  utterance  in  speech, —  a  perfect 
chain  of  physical  motion.  But  I  have  thought,  I  have  felt, 
in  connection  with  the  movements  of  these  molecular  parti- 
cles that  constitute  my  brain.     Can  science  explain  the  fact 


Is  Death  the  End?  123 

that  I  have  thought,  that  I  have  felt,  that  I  have  been  con- 
scious, that  I  have  had  an  emotion  ?  No  :  here  is  the  gulf  on 
the  edge  of  which  all  human  knowledge  pauses  and  confesses 
it  cannot  cross.  This  chain  of  physical  motion  is  complete. 
The  law  of  persistence  of  force  holds  good.  The  law  of 
molecular  motion  holds  good ;  but  it  does  not  approach  an 
explanation  of  thought.  Thought  is  not  one  of  the  links  in 
this  chain  running  through  my  brain.  The  chain  is  complete ; 
the  movements  are  all  complete,  with  the  thought  left  out. 

Here  then, —  and  this  is  the  one  thing  most  important  of 
any  I  shall  have  to  offer  you  this  morning,  though  it  be  diffi- 
cult for  me  to  make  it  perfectly  clear, — here  is  the  one  thing 
that  science  has  demonstrated  to  us  ;  more  than  all  ecclesias- 
ticisms,  more  than  teachers  or  churches  have  ever  attained 
unto.  Science  has  demonstrated  that  that  which  is  essen- 
tial in  man  no  scientific  method  can  explain.  Here,  then,  is 
this  ly  this  consciousness,  this  thought,  this  feeling,  this 
hope,  this  love,  that  do  not  enter  into  the  problem  of  molec- 
ular motion  at  all.  Mr.  Huxley  tells  us  that  perhaps  some 
time  science  will  be  able  to  find  the  exact  "mechanical 
equivalent  '*  of  a  thought ;  but  he  tells  us  also  that,  if  it  does 
find  that,  it  will  not  find  the  thought.  Mr.  Tyndall  tells  us 
that  we  know  no  more  to-day  in  regard  to  this  problem  of 
the  relation  of  the  soul  and-  body,  from  the  scientific  stand- 
point, than  was  known  in  prescientific  ages. 

This,  then,  is  the  thing  that  science  has  demonstrated ;  and 
here  is  ground  whereon  to  take  our  stand, —  a  basis  on  which 
to  found  our  most  magnificent  hopes.  That  which  makes  the 
essential  thing  in  me,  my  thought,  my  love,  my  feeling,  my 
hope,  that  is  no  part  of  that  which  the  scientist  can  explain 
according  to  the  laws  of  matter  and  motion.  Here,  then,  is 
ground  on  which  to  rest.  Here  is  a  field  of  infinite  possi- 
bility.    And  remember  that  it  is  science,  this  much  berated, 


124  Beliefs  about  Man. 

much-abused  science,  that  has  given  us  this  magnificent 
result. 

Now  let  me  hasten  to  another  point,  important  as  bearing 
on  this  great  theme.  1  regard  it  as  something  of  unspeaka- 
ble worth,  as  relating  to  this  subject,  just  the  simple  fact 
exists  that  man  believes  in  a  future  life ;  that  he  has  believed 
this,  practically,  in  all  ages,  under  all  skies,  in  all  nations. 
How  does  it  happen  that  this  grand  belief  has  sprung  up  ? 
If  I  should  find  a  dog,  or  some  other  lower  animal,  thinking 
about  living  after  death,  speculating  about  it,  wondering  if 
he  should,  \Yould  I  not  be  justified  in  saying,  we  must  recast 
our  definition  of  the  animal,  and  put  something  into  his 
brain  or  heart  that  we  never  dreamed  of  before  ?  How  does 
it  happen  that  this  wonderful  animal  man,  of  all  the  produc- 
tions of  the  world,  dares  look  the  grave  in  the  face  and  smile 
at  death  >  It  is  the  belief  that  he  shall  outface  it  and  outlive 
it,  and  be  mighty  beyond  its  power. 

If  you  take  the  lowest  possible  conception  of  the  origin 
of  man  and  say  that  he  is  created  by  the  universe, — that  is, 
that  he  holds  the  same  relation  to  the  universe  that  a  coin 
does  to  the  die  that  stamps  it, —  then  you  must  believe  that 
for  every  mark  in  the  coin  there  was  something  in  the  die 
corresponding  to  it  that  created  that  mark.  Every  grand  in- 
stinct, hope,  feeling,  in  the  human  heart  must  be  accounted 
for.  They  have  been  produced.  They  did  not  spring  cause- 
less out  of  nothing.  If  the  universe  made  the  human  heart, 
then  there  is  something  in  the  universe  that  is  responsive  to 
the  human  heart.  We  know  that  light,  for  example,  has 
created  the  eye  through  long  periods  of  time.  There  was 
a  time,  far  back  in  the  distant  past,  when  the  rudimentary 
eye  was  only  a  little  spot,  just  a  bit  more  sensitive,  some- 
where along  the  line  of  the  rudimentary  nerve.  There  was 
no  clear  vision,  only  this  rudimentary  sensitiveness. 


Is  Death  the  End?  125 

Light  called,  and  the  eye  came  out  to  see.  When  that 
process  was  only  half  complete,  before  there  was  any 
clear  vision,  if  there  had  been  any  competent  intelligence 
looking  on  and  studying  this  problem,  would  he  not  have 
been  justified  in  saying  that,  since  there  was  a  potency 
and  promise  of  vision,  there  must  be  some  great,  creative 
force  corresponding  to  it  ?  So,  through  the  ages,  sound  has 
created  the  ear.  There  was  a  call  from  the  Infinite,  and  this 
curious  mechanism  came  out  to  listen.  At  first,  it  was  only 
rudimentary.  But  if,  as  in  the  other  case,  when  the  process 
was  partially  complete,  and  there  were  only  indistinct  mur- 
murings  instead  of  clear  voices,  had  there  been  an  intelli- 
gence to  study  this  problem,  would  he  not  have  been  justified 
in  saying  there  must  be  some  great  fact  in  the  universe  that 
corresponds  to  this  ear,  that  is  gradually  and  progressively 
creating  it .?  If  the  needle  is  deflected  from  the  north,  it  is  by 
a  power  that  pulls  it  aside  :  and  astronomers  have  discovered 
new  planets  that  they  have  not  seen,  simply  because  they 
have  mathematically  determined,  that  there  must  be  some 
attractive  force  as  yet  not  visible  to  man,  by  the  movements 
of  things  that  were  seen.  Thus,  humanity,  in  its  mighty 
sweep  through  the  ages,  has  been  perpetually  deflected  from 
its  course  and  pulled  toward  some  great  eternal  verity  which 
must  be  postulated  to  explain  the  motion. 

One  other  line  of  argument.  The  flower,  the  grass-blade, 
the  tree,  the  animal,  these  all  pass  through  the  cycle  of 
their  existence  and  are  complete  on  this  earth ;  but  man 
seems  to  be  formed  after  some  grander  pattern,  so  that  he 
does  not  reach  his  completeness  here.  In  all  the  other 
departments  of  Nature,  everything  seems  amply  qualified  to 
fulfil  all  the  promises  that  she  makes.  Shall  we  not  believe 
that  it  must  be  the  same  with  man  ? 

If  you  should  go  into  a  hot-house  and  find  in  some  little 


126  Beliefs  about  Man. 

circumscribed  earthen  vessel  a  growing  germ  of  what  you 
knew  was  capable  of  becoming  a  mighty  Norway  pine,  would 
not  you  be  justified  in  saying  that  this  was  not  the  original 
place  of  development,  that  it  was  not  intended  to  come  to 
completion  here?  If  you,  having  never  seen  the  ocean, 
should  go  into  a  ship-yard  on  a  little  river  miles  away  from 
the  sea,  and  should  study  the  structure  that  was  going  up, 
knowing  that  it  could  not  go  on  the  land  and  that  there  was 
not  room  for  it  in  the  narrow  river,  would  you  not  be  justi- 
fied in  saying,  "  Either  here  is  some  huge  blunder,  or  some- 
where there  is  wide  room  and  scope  for  this  mighty  thing  to 
spread  its  wings  and  sail  to  some  far-off  shore?"  When  you 
see  a  man  like  Goethe,  in  the  fulness  of  his  powers,  having 
studied  so  deeply  into  the  secrets  of  nature,  dying  with  the 
words  upon  his  lips,  "More  light":  when  you  see  a  man  like 
Newton,  in  that  often-quoted  comparison,  speaking  of  him- 
self as  a  little  child  gathering  pebbles  on  the  seashore  while 
the  infinite  ocean  lay  before  him :  do  you  not  feel  compelled 
to  say,  "This  manhood  that  only  grows  and  grows,  but  never 
culminates  here,  is  a  prophecy  of  a  place  where  there  shall 
be  room  for  this  mind  that  wanders  through  eternity,  for  this 
heart  with  its  infinite  capacity  for  love  ? " 

You  would  not  feel  satisfied,  nor  should  I,  to  treat  this  great 
question,  and  leave  out  of  account  the  facts  reported  as  true 
in  all  ages,  and  now  in  this  modern  world  represented  in  a 
more  marked  degree  in  that  which  is  known  by  the  name  of 
Spiritualism.  There  is  a  great  body  of  testimony  stretching 
back  into  the  distance  of  antiquity ;  testimony  not  confined 
to  any  religion,  to  any  nation,  to  any  race ;  testimony,  not  of 
the  poorest  and  most  ignorant,  but  equally  of  the  wisest  men 
of  all  ages  and  times,  to  the  belief  that  there  have  been  at 
least  occasional  breakings  through  from  some  other  sphere, 
or  glimpses  on  this  side  of  that  other  sphere.     There  is  an 


Is  Death  the  End?  127 

amount  of  testimony  so  respectable  that,  were  it  given  in  evi- 
dence of  anything  else  in  the  world,  we  should  never  dream 
of  doubting  it.  Yet  concerning  so  stupendous  a  fact  as  that 
we  do  doubt,  and  perhaps  as  yet,  and  for  a  time,  we  must.  I 
have  no  sympathy  with  those  who  speak  of  these  great  mat- 
ters with  contempt.  I  do  not  feel  that  I  know.  There  are 
testimonies  from  such  men  as  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
and  Dr.  Edward  H.  Clarke  as  to  glimpses  and  visions  of  the 
dying ;  there  are  testimonies  from  all  the  ages  covering  this 
general  field, —  mixed  up,  it  is  true,  with  delusion,  with  palpa- 
ble fraud,  with  all  sorts  of  follies,  that  make  one  pause,  hesi- 
tate, and  question  :  yet  I  believe  there  is  so  large  a  mass  of 
evidence  here  that  it  cannot  be  brushed  aside  contemptu- 
ously by  any  man.  Some  day,  it  must  be  sifted,  to  see  if 
there  be  a  residuum  of  fact  as  its  basis.  Will  you  not  be 
glad  if  there  be  ?  Most  certainly  shall  I !  And  yet  so 
anxious  am  I  not  to  be  deceived  in  regard  to  these  high 
things  that  still  I  pause  and  wait  for  the  competent  investi- 
gator to  sift  the  whole  and  give  me  the  gold,  if  there  be  gold, 
in  this  great  mass  of  dust  and  chaff. 

One  more  question.  Is  there  any  rational  theory  of  a  fut- 
ure life  that  can  be  held  by  the  modern  world  ?  If  I  cannot 
answer  this  question  positively,  I  am  sure  at  least  that  there 
is  one  theory  that  no  reason  and  no  science  can  condemn. 
You  are  familiar  with  the  fact  that  that  which  we  see  and 
hear  is  only  a  very  small  part  of  this  universe.  We  see  so 
long  as  the  wave  movements  of  light  are  a  certain  number 
in  a  second.  We  hear  under  like  conditions.  But  we  know 
that  above  and  below  and  all  around  us  stretch  reaches  of 
this  universe  that  no  present  faculties  of  ours  enable  us  to 
touch.  So  far  then  as  science  has  anything  to  say  on  the 
subject,  this  little  world  that  we  inhabit  may  be  only  like  an 
island  floating  on  the  bosom  of  an  infinite  sea  of  being,  com- 


128  Beliefs  about  Man. 

passing  it  on  every  hand,  and  yet  unseen,  unheard,  unknown 
by  us.  Science  knows  nothing  that  can  contradict  such  a 
theory.  What  indications  there  are  rather  lead  us  to  think 
it  probable.  In  regard  to  these  bodies  of  ours, —  for,  mark 
you,  I  have  no  belief  in  spirit  which  means  nothing^  I  have  no 
belief  in  the  old  idea  of  the  ghost  as  emptied  of  all  that  con-, 
stitutes  existence ;  I  want  no  such  life  as  that ;  I  want  no 
life  poorer,  lower,  than  what  I  enjoy  to-day, —  not  only  has 
science  nothing  to  say  against  it,  but  there  are  many  even 
who  accept  the  theory,  that  within  this  body  there  is  another, 
ordinarily  invisible,  that  cannot  be  touched  or  weighed  or 
handled  by  the  faculties  we  possess.  There  are  some  scien- 
tific experiments  that  lead  us  to  believe  that  there  must  be 
between  the  ultimate  physical  particles  that  compose  this 
body  other  particles  that,  for  the  want  of  a  better  name,  we 
call  ether  particles,  forming  a  body  complete  and  perfect  in 
every  function  and  every  part.  Just  as  science  tells  us  that,  to 
explain  this  universe,  v/e  must  postulate  the  ether  that  fills  all 
the  space  between  the  stars,  so  the  space  between  the  parti- 
cles of  this  body  must  be  filled  with  ether  particles.  What 
hinders  then,  until  the  opposite  can  be  proved,  that  I  should 
cherish  the  belief  that  when  death  comes,  this  body  should 
simply  step  forth  from  the  crumbling  ruins  of  my  old  home, 
free,  complete,  fitted  for  that  other,  higher  life  that  we  may 
trust  surrounds  us  everywhere  now,  and  of  which,  even  to- 
day, unknowing,  we  are  a  par.t4? 


NOTE 

{Supplementary  to  Chapter  VI.,  ''Is  Man  Free?'') 

My  discussion  of  the  will  —  as  published  in  pamphlet  —  has 
already  called  out  considerable  criticism.  It  is  then  perhaps 
worth  while  to  add  a  few  words  excluded  by  the  limits  of  the 
previous  treatment. 

Leaving  one  side  "fate"  and  "predestination,"  I  can  see  but 
two  theories  to  choose  between.  One  is  that  the  will  is  a  "  spon- 
taneous, self-acting  power."  The  other  is  that,  coming  under  the 
law  of  causation,  it  is  determined  by  some  preceding  condition, 
external,  internal,  or  both.  Says  Huxley,  "  A  really  spontaneous 
act  is  one  which,  by  the  assumption,  has  no  cause''  To  assert 
spontaneity  then  of  human  willing  or  acting  is  to  say  that  the 
world  of  mankind  is  chaotic  or  insane.  Indeed,  it  is  to  assert  the 
impossible  ;  for  we  cannot  conceive  the  uncaused. 

What,  then,  is  left?  Only  to  hold  that  a  man's  action  is  always 
determined  by  character  and  motive  (external  and  internal) ;  and 
this  is  the  scientific  doctrine  of  "  necessity."  What  I  have  de- 
nied is  only  the  "power  spontaneously  to  evolve  and  develop 
choices  themselves."  Tliat  a  man  is  free  to  choose  what  he  pleases 
—  to  choose  \i\i2X  he  does  choose — is  a  statement  hardly  worth 
the  trouble  of  either  making  or  defending.  If  that  is  what  is  called 
"free-will,"  I  know  of  no  one  who  will  care  to  deny  it.  The  ap- 
peal is  often  made  to  consciousness.  But  let  us  see  what  it 
teaches.  A  man  is  conscious  of  his  power  to  choose  that  which, 
on  the  whole,  he  prefers.  Is  he  conscious  of  anything  else  ?  I 
for  one,  am  not. 

To  speak  anthropomorphically,  I  find  myself  compelled  to  think 
of  God  himself  as  determined  both  by  his  character  and  by  the 


130  Note. 

circumstances.  Why  cannot  God  lie,  or  do  wrong,  or  commit  an 
absurdity?  Does  not  what  He  is  determine  his  action?  Is  He 
not  determined  by  what  he  sees  to  be  best  ? 

A  friend  writes,  "  I  consider  that,  as  long  as  a  man  is  capable  of 
making  or  feeling  a  moral  appeal^  he  is  sound  on  the  main  ques- 
tion." To  say  that  human  nature  is  under  the  law  of  causation; 
that  action  may  be  determined  by  motive ;  this  seems  to  me  the 
strongest  way  of  saying  that  man  is  capable  both  of  making  and 
feeling  a  "  moral  appeal."  Why  appeal,  teach,  enlighten,  if  mo- 
tive does  not  determine  ?  What  is  character  that  does  not  shape 
and  control  action  ? 

If  a  man  becomes  conscious  that  he  has  been  wrong  in  the  past, 
of  course  he  has  the  power  —  under  an  impulse  springing  from 
that  consciousness,  now  become  a  motive  —  to  change  his  way  of 
life.  Is  not  this  what  is  commonly  meant  by  free-will  ?  But  this 
implies  no  spontaneity  of  action :  it  is  rather  a  clear  illustration 
and  strong  assertion  of  the  fact  that  man  is  under  the  law  of  cause 
and  effect. 


THE  NEW  GOSPEL 


The  nebulous  masses  whirled  to  suns  at  last ; 

And  suns  flung  off  their  worlds.     Through  vapors  piled, 
The  earth  broke  into  light.     Then,  sun-beguiled, 

The  vales  grew  green  and  smiling.     Mountains  vast 

Lifted  themselves  toward  heaven.  As  ages  passed, 
Through  primal  ooze,  through  sea  and  jungle  wild, 
Life  climbed  from  form  to  form ;  until  out-smiled 

The  hu7nan  through  the  brutal.     Long  outcast, 

A  toilsome  wanderer,  the  earth  he  trod. 
He  hid  in  caves ;  he  trembled  with  affright 
At  his  own  fancies,  and  the  wild  uproar 

Of  untamed  elements.     Then  slowly  God 

Broke  from  within,  and  filled  the  earth  with  light. 
Crowning  man  king  where  he  was  slave  before. 

II. 

When,  like  the  infant  Hercules,  man  lay- 
In  earth's  young  cradle,  even  then  did  he, 
With  godlike  vigor,  many  a  mystery 

Of  dark  and  dread  life-threatening  monsters  slay. 

But  now  grown  strong,  'neath  his  advancing  sway, 
Disease  and  pain,  and  grinding  poverty, 
Brain-shackles  and  the  bonds  of  tyranny, 

And  fear  and  hate, —  all  these  "  shall  flee  away." 

Love-crowned  and  knowledge-guided  shall  he  stand, 
Facing  the  future  with  the  god-like  trust 
That  good  to-morrow  follows  good  to-day. 

"  It  doth  not  yet  appear," — that  other  land; 
But  through  the  low-arched  gateway  of  the  dust 
Breaks  hope's  glad  sunrise  with  its  deathless  ray. 
Dbcbmbbr,  i88i. 


14  DAY  USE  m 

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